A skill to cultivate: Setting Stakes

[contracycle]

Well Tony, maybe YOU do.  I don't dispute that at all.

The point I'm trying to present is akin to this: I had a player whose character lost a hand entirely as a legitimate result of system resolving action.  Everything about it was Fair, and he knew the risks.  But nevertheless, he found he could not longer play the now-mutilated character - it was simply a case that he couldn't identify with it any more.  The character conception had been violated by this in-game result.

Now all I'm suggesting is that similarly, a player might balk at a given challenge for reasons that have nothing to do with the in-game situation as such, but have to do with the player and their desires for the game.  To interpret their response in the light of the in-game situation may be erroneous.  The player may not be making any kind of statement more complex than their actual response: "this challenge is unacceptable to me".  To insist that this must be interpreted in the light of the fictional situation is to impose, project a meaning that may not in fact be there at all.  The player may never have conceived it as a choice in those terms at all.

[Vaxalon]

There are, I think, two kinds of GM's out there.

There are those who, when they discover that a Player has territory marked "No Trespassing" see it as a challenge, and those who see it as a valid boundary.

[Mike Holmes]

(note this is cross posted with the last four posts, and I didn't want to go over it again)

Gareth,

I think you're responding to me...but you're so out in left field that I'm not sure. If you're not responding to me, then ignore the following. But I think I must have painted a very odd picture of how these things work in play to have gotten the above response.

First, the contests in question are always avoidable - nobody accidentally goes on a heroquest. In fact, before a player can do one, several conditions must be met:

1. The player must create the myth, or select an available one. In my game I have almost no canon myths, so they're pretty much all the player making them up. And the basis of this selection is a question of what the goal of the quest is.
2. The goal is almost always (though there can be exceptions), the outcome of one or more "heroquest challenges." Which are the mechanic in question. Meaning that in designing or selecting the quest, the player is selecting the stakes. That is, one looks at the heroquest challenges and sees that for the quest they've taken or made that they're going to be putting up X ability to gain Y ability.
3. Then there's a ton of stuff in-game that usually has to happen involving taking steps to make sure that the quest goes well - because it's hard to even get to the heroquest challenges. One has to cross into the otherworld which has a high resistance, and then there are likely to be several other "stations" before one gets to any heroquest challenges, each with it's own challenges. So, again, all steps that involve player volition.
4. Now it is theoretically possible to have the characters accidentally go to an otherworld, and then I could, I suppose, have them "accidentally" follow the path of some hero of the past, and then I could force them to the heroquest moment. In fact, I have had accidental trips to the otherside - though I've never done any of the other theoretical stuff. Even if I did, the player would still have the choice to take on the challenge. Or, I suppose that there are ways to force even this to happen. But if I'm using such techniques, then I'm not supporting narrativism. All of this would be an extremely long way to go to use the mechanic to force a player to accept some character change like this.

So if you're saying that HQ can be played simulationism...well, yeah, so can any game. But the rules militate against it heavily here. The GM would have to do more work here to make play sim than they would in the vast majority of games.

So I think we can rule that out as something that the mechanics support.

As far as avoiding such a contest...I don't mean to imply that everything that a player fails to have the character do is some statement. If the player doesn't say anything about whether or not the character goes to the bathroom on a particular in-game time and place, I don't take that as a statement about the quality bathrooms. It's only conscious rejection of something that counts as the mechanic having an effect on stakes.

What's interesting, however, is that in the case in question, I wasn't even suggesting that Fred have the character take the stakes in question. I was using his character to give an example of how the mechanics worked. And Fred had an instant reaction of "well there's no way I'd risk Okhfel's strength." I mean that's how strong this mechanic is in terms of making things have value as stakes that even on a miscommunication between Fred and I (that is, him taking my example as something he might actually want to do), that he instantly made a strong player statement about what sort of stakes he'd accept for such a situation.

Lastly, Gareth, you make the same mistake as made above in assuming that the statements in question have to be about some act taken by the character. That input about narrativism stuff like premise and theme has to be a matter of a decision made by the player to have the character do something in-game. That's simply not true. Theme can be created entirely by the player making some statement that affects the SIS. "My character will not risk his strength" is a strong input into the game. It's going to affect a ton of what I put into play going forward, for example (I know not to present Fred's character with any quests that would risk his character's strength). Fred's decision on the subject of premise and theme here are quite clear. He's adding to the game in a substantive narrativism fashion.

In any case, none of this is germane to the discussion at hand, unfortunately. The question is not whether or not theme is being created or this is narrativism - as I've admitted HQ can be drifted to sim. The question is whether or not the mechanic helps set up stakes. For a sim game, either the GM selects the stakes, or the player does for an Open Sim game. In these cases, the mechanic in question still helps with stake selection. By, at the very least saying, "In this sort of case, look at the character sheet, and select an ability." By merely narrowing the list of stakes down to the list of abilities, this facilitates setting stakes, even for a sim game.

If you define "stakes" in the narrativism sense only (which is one valid definition), then you can only apply it to narrativism play.

Anyhow, I get the feeling that people are saying that the heroquest challenge is a mechanic that always is helping to set up stakes in every situation. Which couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, this mechanic comes into play very rarely. In 40 sessions of play in the game in question (with the players in question), we've only discussed using these mechanics, and have never once actually used them. Again, I'm not saying that the heroquest challenge mechanics help set up stakes for every single contest in HQ. I'm saying they're one tool in the toolbox that's very effective for setting stakes in certain very rarified circumstances. I'm not saying it affects all play, just that when those circumstances come along, that it's an extremely effective mechanism. Overall, as part of the whole toolbox of mechanics, the HQ mechanics to a pretty good job of helping to set stakes. But I was simply selecting out one that happens to be particularly effective in the situations for which it was created to address.

The standard HQ resolution is very subtle and interesting to me. There is no explicit step for pre-setting stakes. As such much of the "skill" discussion of the thread pertains to it. That is, you may want to ask questions in a certain manner and such to set stakes. In fact, it's particularly easy to screw this up in HQ in some ways. That is, it's all too easy to go into a contest as task resolution and not conflict resolution.

What's interesting, however, is that unlike some of the suggestions here, and other games that make explicit the setting of stakes up front, in HQ, the stakes are left ambiguous to an extent, and up to the GM to set after the roll. I think this is an interesting variation, and one that I enjoy. That is, the procedure I use to support narrativism in HQ looks like this.

1. Ensure before hand that I have a solid statement of what the conflict is about. Not stakes precisely, just what the goals are. That is, if a player says, "I want to cut his head off" I ask "Is your goal to kill your opponent? Or is your character really just looking to get away?" That sort of clarification. This does establish very generalized stakes that the rules say that the roll will resolve.
2. We roll, which produces a gradated result. This is odd for conflict resolution games in some ways, which are usually pass/fail.
3. HQ is pass/fail for the generalized stakes from above, with the caveat that you can't eliminate the source of the resistance to getting the stakes (barring getting a "Complete Victory" level). So at this point the narrator has to come up with a description of how the generalized stakes were accomplished or not. But that leaves the subject of the gradation.
4. In addition to the generalized stakes being achieved or not, the narrator has the option to select a mechanical penalty to assign to the loser of the contest that modifies the generalized stakes to something more specific, and perhaps not directly indicated in the generalized stakes agreement.

So, let's use the example of the player who says, "I want to cut off his head!"

1. I ask and find out that, indeed, the player's goal is for his opponent to be dead. The generalized stakes here are to do harm to the opponent, and his opponent's I determine are to do harm in return.
2. We roll, and he gets a minor victory.
3. The generalized stakes can't actually be the death of the opposition, because that would eliminate the source of the opposition. So we determine that, instead, harm has been done to the opponent.
4. Since it's a minor victory, that means that I have the option of assigning a penalty of some sort that gives a -10% to related future contests. So in this case I decide to make it a nasty arm gash in narration. The -10% will apply where I think it should, likely to things like using that arm to fight.

Note that "getting my arm injured" was not set up as part of the stakes explicitly. What this system does is to allow the narrator to select a stake that matches the generalized stake, and create a very specific application of it. This freedom to specify after the fact is a very cool part of the mechanic. Because it means that instead of knowing precisely what's being staked, the player has to worry about what the specific application will be, and how bad it will be.

I'm not saying that knowing the precise stakes can't be fun at times, too. But I think that it adds some of the suspense from sim games back in to hand the power to make this sort of decision over the narrator. Note that in play I usually follow up with "Does that sound cool?" Getting the player's agreement on my choice. But generally players don't often reject the specific stakes, as it's easy to make them a subset of the generalized stakes they've agreed to, and it's more fun to treat the specific outcome as a matter of "fate." That is, I think the players enjoy the slight lack of control here. And I certainly enjoy coming up with penalties that I think everyone will enjoy having in play.

I think this facilitates making the use of the skill of setting stakes easier, because one does not have to be very specific. "Do him harm" or something on that breadth is just fine in many cases. Further, one can, in fact, be very specific if one wants, the "generalized" stakes becoming pretty narrow. So you don't miss out on the sort of suspense where you know that something in particular is up for grabs. And, again, when you are doing a heroquest challenge, on those rare occasions, you do know very precisely what it is you're putting out as stakes.

At the risk of going on too long about this, what's cool about the mechanical stakes in a heroquest challenge, IMO, is coming up with the in-game description of what's occuring in some cases. For instance, if one loses a magic item, that's pretty obvious what the loss narration is going to be like - the other guy walks off with your thing. Losing a follower...well, you have to be pretty cold blooded to risk a follower, but you can imagine what that's going to look like if you lose. Perhaps a demon eats your follower. Magic seems pretty intuitive to people, too - you're doing something otherworldly, and you lose the ability to do something related. Seems to make sense. But the most interesting ones are losing abilities like strength, or personality traits, or the like. This means that the character may be physically transformed, or that part of their soul or spirit or whatever is ripped out leaving a potentially gaping hole. A character might lose their ability to "Laugh with Gusto" or something. Which at first seems sorta cheap. But if you think about what it implies about what's happened to the character spiritually, it's pretty heavy. "And since then Gunther no longer laughs like he used to..."

Fun stuff.

Anyhow, I should also say that the text of HQ has not made this all easy to determine. If you want to charge me with drift to my own version of the rules, that's probably not innacurate from certain perspectives. So if you want to consider this "the way Mike plays HQ" or something instead of what the HQ text promotes, that's fine. I'm speaking to the interpretation of the text that I have made in order to play effectively. The point is that there are ideas here that people can look at in terms of creating future, more effective, mechanics for facilitating the skill of stake setting that this thread is about.

Mike

[TonyLB]

The player may never have conceived it as a choice in those terms at all.

So what?  Look ... these choices are choices, whether the player thinks of them that way or not.  It's not subjective.

For instance, Fred has been offered a choice:  Risk some part of Okhfels on a Heroquest to aid his community, or don't.  He's chosen "don't."  Nobody hit him over the head and used his unconscious body as a ventriloquist's dummy.  He said it, he did it, he chose.  Now he can give justifications until he's blue in the face ... it would ruin my character, it would destroy my fun, the flavor text supports me, my dog was sick, this guy was holding a gun to my head ... whatever.  I.  Don't.  Care.  He doesn't need to justify his decision, to me or to anybody.  It's his decision.  He has the power and the right to make it any way he sees fit.

He can even convince himself afterwards that it wasn't a decision, he never really did have a choice, and that his actions have no meaning whatsoever.  Again, I don't care.  He can think what he likes.

What he can't do is convince me that I can't judge him based on what I see him do and decide.  Sorry, we're a judgmental lot, we humans.  I look at that decision and I say "Well ... now I know something more about Fred.  Cool."  I don't know as much (by a long shot) as the people who were playing the game with him, but I know more than I did, and you will never convince me that I don't.

When you want people to learn those things about you, when you make it the point of the game, that's my rough and ready definition of Narrativism.  Does that work for you?

[Supplanter]

The player may never have conceived it as a choice in those terms at all.

So what?  Look ... these choices are choices, whether the player thinks of them that way or not.  It's not subjective.

For instance, Fred has been offered a choice:  Risk some part of Okhfels on a Heroquest to aid his community, or don't.  He's chosen "don't."  Nobody hit him over the head and used his unconscious body as a ventriloquist's dummy.  He said it, he did it, he chose.  Now he can give justifications until he's blue in the face ... it would ruin my character, it would destroy my fun, the flavor text supports me, my dog was sick, this guy was holding a gun to my head ... whatever.  I.  Don't.  Care.  He doesn't need to justify his decision, to me or to anybody.  It's his decision.  He has the power and the right to make it any way he sees fit.

He can even convince himself afterwards that it wasn't a decision, he never really did have a choice, and that his actions have no meaning whatsoever.  Again, I don't care.  He can think what he likes.

What he can't do is convince me that I can't judge him based on what I see him do and decide.  Sorry, we're a judgmental lot, we humans.  I look at that decision and I say "Well ... now I know something more about Fred.  Cool."  I don't know as much (by a long shot) as the people who were playing the game with him, but I know more than I did, and you will never convince me that I don't.

When you want people to learn those things about you, when you make it the point of the game, that's my rough and ready definition of Narrativism.  Does that work for you?

It's hard to see this as corresponding one-for-one with the other two definitions on offer, Ron's "Addressing Premise" and Vincent's "Passionate characters having their passions tested." Among other things, Vincent's capsule definition explicitly engages the fictional emotions within the SIS as opposed to the meatspace emotions around the table.

In our second session of the PTA: Replacements pilot, my character Owen threw a knife through the throat of a bystander because it would let the Replacements keep a villain from making a hecatomb of a Florida town with a loose nuke. It was a powerful moment around the table; it was a response to an ethical Premise (Is it worth sacrificing one person to save the lives of many); since Owen's issue was Atonement it probably represented a passionate character FAILING a test of his passions. All very narrativist. But it doesn't really represent a chance to learn about how I personally feel about whether it is worth sacrificing one person to save the lives of many - you'd get a truer read on that from my blog. It's certainly an issue, as it touches war, torture and the proper limits of government power, that engages me emotionally, which has traditionally been a key test of narrativism. But Owen's answer isn't mine. All one can learn about me from what happened in the session is that I'm willing to create a fiction in which a protagonist answers Yes to the question.

Maybe that's the kind of learning you're talking about?

In the hypothetical of Fred preemptively refusing a Heroquest in which his character refuses to risk his Strength, your principle would probably make it NOT narrativist, if my reading of what Fred has written is correct: Fred's "point of play" isn't to have the other players learn about him through his choice; his purpose is to play a super-strong Oekhfels. If Mike forced him into the "tough tradeoff" - his Strength or his Beloved - he might risk Oekhfels' strength, but his purpose still would not be to teach you something about himself. You might correctly say you learn something, but it wouldn't be Fred's purpose that you learn it.

I submit that it would fail the more traditional "player engagement" test of narrativism too, which I think is why Mike has said he wouldn't force it on Fred. That is, Fred isn't intrigued by the prospect of testing Oekhfels (or Fred's) relative valuation of Oekhfels' Strength vs. Love. Rather he would dread the necessity.

Fred, please correct me if I misinterpreted your perspective. Mike too.

Do we need a new thread? It feels like we're drifting pretty far from the original topic.

Best,


Jim

[TonyLB]

But Owen's answer isn't mine. All one can learn about me from what happened in the session is that I'm willing to create a fiction in which a protagonist answers Yes to the question.

Maybe that's the kind of learning you're talking about?

Sorta-kinda.  For me it's pretty hard to disentangle my sense of what makes a good story and a good protagonist from my other moral positions.  I can, for instance, make a statement with a character who says that non-violence is the only way, and that violence can only ever make things worse.  And I can turn right around and make a statement with a character who says that violence is a sign of passion, and that those who won't hurt others don't really believe in anything.  But both of those come from me, from the things I've considered in my own life, and even though they're not the exact thing I believ myself, they're going to be subtly different from anyone else's take on the same issue.

And, of course, having thought a lot about this I'm likely to respond to stakes like "Can he convince them to stop without resorting to violence?" more readily than I will ... urgh ... "Can he convince them to stop without revealing his superhuman powers?"  Man, it's hard to even think of stakes like that ... I have to catalog my own mind and say "Okay, what stuff don't I pay very much attention to?"  But my point was that you'll be able to learn things about me, Tony, and what I've thought about by observing what stakes I get excited about and what stakes leave me cold.

Do we need a new thread? It feels like we're drifting pretty far from the original topic.

Actually, I still feel like we're talking about the process of setting stakes ... or, more specifically, why stakes are structured the way they are.  For me this whole thing gets to the question of how you determine what good stakes are ... by understanding the pattern of someone's thinking enough to understand that there are questions that they've got thoughts about ... but not understanding them well enough to know what their answers are going to be. 

I think Dogs in the Vineyard does a great job of promoting this type of thinking with its reflection question of "Oh, so you believe that, huh?  Well what about in this circumstance?"  It forces people to recognize that (a) they've learned something about (at least) what the other player chooses to portray and (b) there's more to learn.

[Vaxalon]

Fred, please correct me if I misinterpreted your perspective. Mike too.

Nope, you nailed it right on the head.  Better than I would have.

[Storn]

I guess what I'm getting at, is that if a mechanic does not produce stakes that I'm willing to accept, then the mechanic fails in its task of assisting the setting of stakes.

I think, feel, that is the wrong way to look at it.  If the mechanics help you communicate with your GM and other players, and you make a decision to "find another way... ie.... not accept the stakes.... the mechanic has not failed... it has suceeded.  The mechanic is not there to generate stakes... but to prompt ideas.   If you accept the stakes.... the mechanic has succeeded.

Where the mechanic might fail if arguing and complaining and reliance on multiple die rolls ensues... and I think most gamers have had evenings like that... then the mechanic has not "facilitated" a compromise.  But the players and GM have "failed" in a sense as well.

[Judd]

The mechanic is not there to generate stakes... but to prompt ideas.   If you accept the stakes.... the mechanic has succeeded.

Where the mechanic might fail if arguing and complaining and reliance on multiple die rolls ensues... and I think most gamers have had evenings like that... then the mechanic has not "facilitated" a compromise.  But the players and GM have "failed" in a sense as well.

It feels an awfully lot like we are on to another thread in which we discuss how in actual play a set of mechanics has helped us create or hindered our creation of stakes.

Is it feeling a bit like beating-a-dead-horseville for the past three pages or so?

[CPXB]

I've been reading this thread and thinking about it for a couple of days, now, and now that the discussion is winding down I get a few things to say.  Oh, well.  ;)

First, I think an issue -- not necessarily a *problem*, I should add -- about the explicitness of stakes is a certain lack of suspense.  They basically know what's gonna happen, one way or the other.

Second, it weakens the sense of gambling.  I think a lot of folks will disagree, and believe that the stakes can "become blisteringly hot", but I think that's false.  The stakes are never hot because you never lose something you want to keep.  The win=fun and lose=fun means, given that we play games because they're fun, means that all the gambles are false gambles.  For a gamble to be meaningful, the loss has to hurt. (Tho', obviously in the HQ example, yeah, that's a legitimate gamble, but in most of to other situations described I would *not* consider that a legitimate gamble.)

[Vaxalon]

Hm.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

The crux of what you're saying seems to be as follows:

"I don't find gambling fun, unless there's a risk of losing so much that I'd no longer be having fun."

Is that correct?

[CPXB]

As a Las Vegan, yeah.

Losing isn't fun.  You might like the game, but few people enjoy losing.  For a gamble to be meaningful, there must be a legitimate loss.

[Vaxalon]

I think that's where it's falling down for you.

Gambling isn't really an element of narrative-focused play.  It's a gamism element.

At least... that's the way I understand it.  Having invoked GNS I'm sure I'll be told how I'm wrong.

[Judd]

First, I think an issue -- not necessarily a *problem*, I should add -- about the explicitness of stakes is a certain lack of suspense.  They basically know what's gonna happen, one way or the other.

They do know but if stakes are set well, no one is sure how they will react once they are in their new situation.  Conflict should effect change in the game and if done well, both stakes will be exciting.

Second, it weakens the sense of gambling.  I think a lot of folks will disagree, and believe that the stakes can "become blisteringly hot", but I think that's false.  The stakes are never hot because you never lose something you want to keep.  The win=fun and lose=fun means, given that we play games because they're fun, means that all the gambles are false gambles.  For a gamble to be meaningful, the loss has to hurt. (Tho', obviously in the HQ example, yeah, that's a legitimate gamble, but in most of to other situations described I would *not* consider that a legitimate gamble.)

I disagree with this entirely.

The loss can hurt to the character but the player can think its freaking cool for the PC to be captured so the other plays have to get them free from evil's clutches or they lose a hand or whatever the loss of stakes is.

Stakes can be hot and fun.  Loss can be fun.  Losing can be fun.

Driving your character towards self-destruction and ruin can be fun.

If it is not so for you, could you please post an Actual Play example when it wasn't for you?

[TonyLB]

Stakes can be hot and fun.  Loss can be fun.  Losing can be fun.

Uh ... I think you guys are talking about different things.  I'll try to rephrase, and you can correct me if you think I'm wrong.

CPXB:  If I got what I wanted, whether I won or lost, then it wouldn't really seem like a risk.  More like ... well, picking a restaurant by sticking my finger on a list of pre-approved really good restaurants.

Paka:  Winning what you really want can be fun.  Losing, and not getting what you want, can be fun too.  You don't have to get what you wanted in order to think that the outcomes are incredibly cool.

Both of you (to my eye) seem to support setting stakes that matter (i.e. you want them to come out a certain way), and then enjoying the outcome whether you win or lose.

CPXB thinks Paka is saying:  If the stakes matter then losing won't be fun, so I shouldn't make stakes that matter.

Paka thinks CPXB is saying:  If you have fun when you lose then it must be because the stakes don't matter, so I shouldn't have fun when I lose.

Neither of them is correct about what the other is saying.

And that's my morning's "climb way out on a limb" exercise.  Either I'm right, and I'll look freakin' brilliant, or I'm wrong and I'll look like a moron.  I want the first outcome, but it'll be cool and fun either way.