Personality mechanics

[Tommi Brander]

This thread, reading the Burning Wheel, and few other factors have made me wonder if there is any reason to make restrictive personality mechanics (instead of incentive ones). Reading my fantasy heartbreaker (not published) I noticed that it uses mostly incentive mechanics, too; they grant a bonus to certain actions. Sometimes a penalty to inappropriate ones.
Sadly the only personality mechanic in use is talent "aggressive" that grants bonus to melee attacks and intimidation. The character (I know, there is know character; it's only the palyer, this just seems more natural) bashes things a lot, granted, and uses intimidation often enough. Probably would even without the talent. So no "actual" actual play in this thread.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tommi,

The thread can't continue without including an account of actual play of some kind that's relevant to your topic.

It can be any actual play you've done which is relevant. You make a distinction between restrictive and incentive-based personality mechanics. Have you played any game with any such things? I mean, even alignment is often treated as a restrictive personality mechanic in many applications of D&D. Describe your experiences with any such thing.

Best,
Ron

[Tommi Brander]

I'd very much like not to, but it seems necessary.
For reasons that have to do with me GMing a lot and being in the standard player's position quite little, all I have is gained from observing a player of mine. Which is the reason of my dislike.

So, in the above-mentioned heartbreaker, his character is able to berserk, which gives great offensive power but equally great defensive problems. The character has grown mighty enough to destroy almost anything (and has retired, kind of). When he fought, he very rarely berserked, for a fear of critical hits that sometimes ignore armour. I assume that he would have liked to berserk more, but tactical reasons made it very hazardous. Against single and dangerous opponents he did berserk, in the hopes of killing them before any retaliation (and often succeeded).
The main point is that berserking is something of a restrictive rule. It is prone to causing sudden deaths. Which, in a traditional RPG, is bad.
I'm not sure how relevant this...

[Tommi Brander]

I just realized something: the problem is not just restricting character actions with personality, but all restricting of characters.
Or, my sim-run-the-setting instincts. Never mind.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Tommi,

Thanks for following up on this. This topic is a big deal! Let's talk about berserking as a key feature of role-playing design ever since the late 1970s, when it appeared in many games.

I'm not sure which was first, although I remember it earliest from the Arduin Grimoire booklets, which introduced the "barbarian" class. It was included in the 1977 (5th edition) of Tunnels & Trolls as an add-on. The most significant one for me, though, was the so-called Disadvantage of berserking in the game Champions, which of course was no disadvantage at all in many games.

Here's the logic which seems to accompany most text on berserking in these early games: Berserking makes your character more powerful in combat, but he cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, and he gets tired afterwards. The rules for these things vary a little across the games, but not much. The last two bits are supposed to provide some kind of limit on how often the player chooses or utilizes the option.

However, they don't work. When the key factor in play is combat success, beating the foe is the top priority, regardless of collateral damage and regardless of what happens after the fight. So berserking is a win-win for the player, all the time, every time. Also, play usually includes a tacit agreement that the GM will not throw a major foe at the group after a big fight anyway.

In Champions (1981), the system put a little brake on this by restricting when the character goes berserk, requiring a roll, but hey, you get to roll every time you act .... so it'll happen soon enough.

So historically, in play, people always see this tug-of-war. Everyone wants the drama of their character going bugshit and getting all powerful in the fight, and for their friends to be afraid of them (this is a big deal in a lot of groups, actually). But it gets annoying very fast - the "all powerful" part ruins the rest of the combat tactics, the other players can't include the berserker guy in teamwork, the berserker-player starts to run ego games on everyone else, and the GM can't even introduce a character to say "hello" without the threat of this guy burying an axe in the NPC's head and the player says, "Tee-hee, I went berserk."

Sound familiar? If so, talk more about what happened in a session. Who was the NPC, what did the player do, and how did other people in the group react?

However. This is not about "bad players." What berserking shows us, and has shown us for years, is that people playing RPGs will discover which rules really work for specific goals. If the goal is to win by beating other critters and characters in combat, or out-doing other players in combat, then these old-school rules for berserking are going to stand out to the player with a big "do this" green-light blinking over them.

The rules for berserking that I'm familiar with from the old days, and that I'm pretty sure are reflected in your current game design, are making your friend's behavior correct from the standpoint of "I'm just following the rules."

I suggest that your friend is playing your game as written, whereas you're trying to play the game that you'd like your rules to be about. See the difference?

Now, I could be wrong. All this is merely an idea that I'd like you to evaluate, to see how well it fits. Let me know.

I'd also greatly appreciate others' input regarding their own experience with berserking-rules. Please be very clear about what game you were using and how the rules worked. A lot of 1980s games, for instance, tried to include berserking but also to tone down the rewards for it.

Best,
Ron

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Ember Twilight had optional Berserking rules that we play-tested.  He got the damage and speed bonuses as usual and had to make a roll to get into the Rage and get another roll to get out of it.  I think only once (in two years) did it ever result in a PC death.  The reward for usinging wasn't unbalanced, however.  His damage output still couldn't match a caster who was just blasting and burning everything in sight.  The monk class that we playtested also had a really high damage output.  Thankfully, no one in our group was ever jerk enough to railroad the GM or ther players by randomly going Berserk and killing NPCs for no good reason.  I have heard stories of such a think tho.

Peace,

-Troy

[Storn]

So historically, in play, people always see this tug-of-war. Everyone wants the drama of their character going bugshit and getting all powerful in the fight, and for their friends to be afraid of them (this is a big deal in a lot of groups, actually). But it gets annoying very fast - the "all powerful" part ruins the rest of the combat tactics, the other players can't include the berserker guy in teamwork, the berserker-player starts to run ego games on everyone else, and the GM can't even introduce a character to say "hello" without the threat of this guy burying an axe in the NPC's head and the player says, "Tee-hee, I went berserk."

wow.  Just wanted to say well said.  I never knew it, but I was always very leery of Berserkers for roleplaying.... and I think you nailed it on the head.

And it is annoying.

Riffing off of Record of the Lodoss War, there is a wonderful character named Orson who Berserks.  He is actually demonically possessed and fights that side of him every step of the way... eventually sacrificing himself for the "good guys".  My vague notion is if the mechanical "govenor" was somehow tied into image.  Self image and what others thought of you.

Orson of Lodoss became less and less confident as the episodes became more prevalent.  While his "party" understood, the surrounding cast gave him more distance.  From my incomplete understanding of the historical Berserker, they were admired and feared by their society.  There are much better experts here who can perhaps suggest balance mechanics extrapolated from the real thing.

This is a kinda White Wolfy angsty spiral mechanic here... but it might be a way of saying 'Yeah, you can be death on two legs.... but there is a cost.  A cost to yourself and a social cost."  Granted, Lodoss was fiction, not cooperative storytelling... but it intrigued me how much of Orson's problem drove the subplots... the cast was actively trying to help him and it was considered a "problem"....

In Burning Wheel, it is a Trait, and it is everyone's responsiblity at the table to weave into the story, not just the individual player and GM.  Of course, in BW, you cannot take a Trait unless the whole table agrees to it in the first place.  So a group knowing that they are getting a Berserker is ready and wants to deal with that storyline.

[contracycle]

Hmm, my experiences of it are mostly that it was rejected; the loss of control was too high a price to pay for the way the players I knew liked to fight.  These experiences were with WW's Werewolf and Vampire.  Players would go to great lengths to try to keep the frenzy under control; ultimately it was what cause Werewolf to be rejected for regular play.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Gareth, can you be more specific about the later sessions of Werewolf which really made that concept clear to everyone, or to enough people to affect such a major decision?

I'm really, really interested in the degree to which mid-90s Werewolf play recapitulated early-80s Champions play. Comments from various designers lead me to think the link is pretty direct.

Best,
Ron

[RDU Neil]

Coming from a long time Champions/Hero background... I know what Ron is talking about... and we certainly had the high school twonks who tried to game the Berzerk disad... I guess I was lucky in that 90% of the time, for the past 25 years, I've been in decent enough groups that the social contract (a term that never really existed back then) was enforced and players punished for being assholes.  Actual play:  One character took tons of disadvantages like Berzerk When Confronted and Hunted by Everyone on the planet... so after he showed up out of the blue to help our super team, after the fight we all rolled to notice who this guy was.  It was a "So... aren't you that guy that's wanted for attack that cashier for short changing you at Kroger's?"  This of course was a "confrontation" so the character started foaming at the mouth with a "What you gonna do about it?!?!?!" attitude... so the rest of us blew him through a wall, arrested him, gave him to the authorities and he went to prison.  Character was never played again.   So... these kind of things CAN work, as long as the social contract is upheld, even when unpleasant.  (That player faded out over time as well.)

From a game design POV... me still being in love with the Hero System... I champion (pun intended) the interpretation of Hero that says, "Points equal player control"  By this I mean, since you "buy" character attributes/powers/skills/characteristics with points... the player is saying, "I value this aspect of my character based on how much I'm willing to spend."  Not only that but "I expect this aspect of my character to be effective and story driving in comparison with how much I've spent."  Once adopted, this idea really works for interpreting the subtext of what is going on in Hero... and allows for powerful "in game" interpretations.

Example:  Full cost for a 10d6 Energy Blast is 50 points.  If a player pays full cost... the expectation is that this power is core to the character, is in full control (as much as that is possible) of the player, and should be considered key to the story of the character.

IF... as is possible... a player seeks a point break on that cost with a "power limitation" then the player is ceding control and effectiveness at the game table for a point break.  No matter what the limitation (doesn't always work, not vs. fire, burnout, whatever) the fact that they took a point break is the player saying "I give up some control and game influence to the GM in this area, and expect the GM to exploit this."  

Now... this is not inherent in how the game is described.  Instinctively most new gamers are drawn to the point savings simply to buy more powers, not because they are into giving the GM control over their character (for lack of a better phrase.)  But if this philosophy is explained and bought into... it has benefits to everyone at the table.  Players know that what is important to THEM as a PLAYER should be paid for in full points... and the GM has the responsibility to "free stuff" that flesh out the character (equipment, vehicles, whatever) that are more props that story elements... which can be seen as counter to the "you have to pay points for everything" mentality that can overwhelm the playability of Hero.

What happens is that Points become a Social Contract metric.  "I paid points for that" is a legitimate way of the player waving a Flag.

This gets really interesting when you go into Disadvantages which GIVE the player points... but at the expense of turning almost total control/story drive over to the GM in those situations.   This brings us back to Berzerk and making it a legitimate Personality Mechanic.  Long before I had any idea of a philosophy of gaming or that there was anything like RPG theory, preferences, etc., we were interpreting Berzerk this way.  The comment was "If you take Berzerk... when it happens, you lose control of your character.  The GM decides what you do, who you attack, and how crazy you get.  If you want the ability to go bugfuck in order to be a badass fighter... well buy that as a power construct... pay points for it... then you get to control your badass berzerker self to your hearts content."

This worked really well... and I think is a solid way for a personality mechanic to work... whether in a points based system or otherwise.  If something is truly supposed to be a restriction to how a player has their character act... then the limitation has to be "on the player" and not just on the charater.  Control of the character needs to be "taken" (harsh word I know) by the GM, or the group as a whole, or whoever is driving the story.  

Essentially, since charater behavior is player behavior, then a mechanic to channel, restrict or manage character behavior has to somehow manage player behavior... usually by giving other players (GM included) some say in what the character does.  

In Hero/Champions... points are just a metric for judging how much player control vs. group/GM/story control come up at any given moment in the game.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Ron pointed me to some really good questions.

1.  Is it socially viable?  IE does ramping up the power of one player's character cause too much consternation in the other players?

2.  Is it creatively viable?  IE Does it add to the game?

3.  If so, what would the mechanics look like to acheive those goals while not screwing up everyone else's fun?

I could answer them at least in part.

1.  It would have to be a game where combat-effectiveness is not the oly spotlight and means to a Reward.  The social contract is broken when a player hogs all the fun and is the center of attention consistantly in one important scene after another.

2.  Yes. Uniqueness for characters, especially in a gamist agenda, is important.  I feel Berserking is no less viable than magic spells or a thieve's backstab.

3.  This si where I have trouble.  It seems to scream to be limited (only during the full moon for example) or be given so-called drawbacks (you attack your friends).  I could also see a "triggered" berserk after you've taken so many wounds or something Precious of yours is put in harm's way.  Another way might be to try to "balance" by increasing a character's damage wile descreasing his accuracy.  Not sure how fun that is tho.

Which one is the best?  Beats me.  None of them are very elegant.  I'd like to find a mechanic that says more about the character.  Combat awesomeness is cool to a point, but developing all aspects of a character is what's really fun for me.

Peace,

-Troy

[joshua neff]

In the early '90s I played in a Champions game. A lot of the players in the game took Disads purely for the points--I'm talking a flame-wielding character who regularly set opponents on fire despite his Code Against Killing Disad, and a "ghetto Iron Man" character who was an inventor and computer hacker despite having a Disad of Functional Illiteracy. Obviously, the GM was something of a pushover and didn't call these players to task. My own character began as a typical "jester" character, a shapechanger called "The Fool." His origin was based on the Joker's from The Killing Joke--a comedian who got in with the criminal element because of hard times. After the mob killed his wife and kids in front of him, he went crazy, blanking out his past, and became a crimefighter. Anyway, just like the rest of the players, I took a Disad purely for the points. In this case, I took Beserk, with the trigger being whenever he saw women or children threatened. But although I took it for the points, it suddenly fleshed the character out for me and gave him all kinds of story potential. Here was this Beast Boy-esque goofball who had the propensity for really scary freakouts. In the first session, the GM had us rescuing an orphanage from some criminals who had taken it hostage. When one of the crooks threatened a kid in front of me, my character rolled, blew it, turned into a bear and tore into the crook.

Now, this bit could have really thrown the group off. My character became a horrible killing machine. But in this group, my character was still a lightweight. (Later in the run, the group had to compete with a Microsoft-type corporation, and most of the group--myself and Lon "Uncle Dark" excluded--decided to start killing drug dealers and taking their money to raise enough capital to compete with the megacorp. These players were not playing Goody-Twoshoes characters.) Because of the loose morality of the other PCs, and because my character was one in a group of 8 or 9 PCs, what I saw as cool story stuff for my character got lost in a shuffle of "take down the badguys in any way we can" tactics. I wanted drama and tension from my Beserk Disad, but in that group it was just another way to get points and take down NPCs. As a result, the character got really boring to play really quickly, and I dropped him. (I dropped the whole game soon after, when the group decided to kill of drug dealers.) Having a Beserk character was deprotagonizing for me in this situation, not to the other players, because being Beserk had no meaning.

[Brandon Parigo]

When a character would end up with, or chose Berserk in any game I was running or playing, I would always think, "wow cool", because I've always liked the idea of the guy who looses it and draws blood, sometime even from his friends, but also because I thought that when a character had anything on their character sheet it added to the group dynamic, which was the glue to bounce our stories around in. 

Gamma World was always a fun game.  I loved the random mutations.  My group made up so many random mutations to add to the list that I have forgotten which ones were ours and which belonged to the game.  One of these mutations was a mutation that had the side effect of having the characger go Berserk, or something close to it.  The first few times that the character went Berserk and ended up hurting friends it was kinda nerve racking.  Everyone didn't like it.  So we tried an experiment.  We made random charts, that told us what the character would do, and to who.  The fun started.  By the end of that game session, we had players who wanted to know what the Berserker was going to do.  They didn't seem to mind if they lost fingers, or had permanent bite marks afterword.   

We also had many Mutations that effected things randomly, or in a radius around the character, that couldn't be turned off.  These things never bothered our group, nor could they really be considered personality mechanics.  They did however change the group dynamics. 

Vampires frenzy.  I ran vampire constantly for ten years or so, and never once did I let a player blank out and not roleplay his frenzy.  Sure I let them roll to stop from attacking their friends, but never did I not let them describe it if it happened.  To play vampire is to run that risk, which is part of the excitement of the game, for me and for those I ran the game for.

Vampire child, everyone at the table hated this character, I think even the player playing him.  A vampire child is just silly.  Which manifested in the other players making fun of him.  Well vampires go crazy sometimes when they are pushed, which includes being teased.  One day Vampire Child snapped in an elevator on one of the other characters (making fun of him of course).  The resulting scene, while not what the players initially wanted (vampire child really messed up the other character), ended up shaping the game into much much more.

With Vampire everyone was alright with it because it is part of the rules for the game.  They knew it stepping into it.  With Gamma World they were not alright with it.  I think this was because it was not something that was universal.  It was a small thing that one person had AND when it happened that the person had to attack a friend, it made it seem as if one player was being nasty to another player as fun, even if that wasn't the case.  In a point by system (which GW wasn't)you could even say that maybe they took berserk because they in some small way don't care what happens to the other player characters.   When we introduced the random charts, it popped the pressure bubble.  Something happened to stop that feeling, which made it fun again.

I'm not sure if that helps any, but those are my actual play thoughts on Berserk.

Brandon

[Mark Johnson]

In practice, I find that Personality mechanics are best handled storywise by the character advancement reward system rather than bonuses or compelled action.  Clinton's Sweet20 Experience Points Systems at http://www.lawfulneutral.com/sweet20/xp.html includes a key:

"Key of the Thoughtless Madman
You are a berzerker, a cauldron of boiling rage! You fight savagely, with no concern to yourself or those around you. Gain 1 XP when your current HP falls below 50% of your total HP. Gain 2 XP when your current HP falls below 25% of your total HP. Gain 5 XP if your current HP hits or falls below 0 HP. Buyoff: Kill a friend."

Not really sure how well Sweet 20 interacts with D20 based systems, I would love to see an AP on that.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Hey folks, let's focus on Tommi's specific concern:

his character is able to berserk, which gives great offensive power but equally great defensive problems. The character has grown mighty enough to destroy almost anything (and has retired, kind of). When he fought, he very rarely berserked, for a fear of critical hits that sometimes ignore armour. I assume that he would have liked to berserk more, but tactical reasons made it very hazardous. Against single and dangerous opponents he did berserk, in the hopes of killing them before any retaliation (and often succeeded).
The main point is that berserking is something of a restrictive rule. It is prone to causing sudden deaths. Which, in a traditional RPG, is bad.

Looking at this again, what strikes me now is that the behavior was kept rare through a mechanics-based balancing mechanism.

So, is that a problem? It didn't cause this character's sudden death, after all.

Tommi, one thing I'm confused about is what problem you're identifying. Is the problem that berserking was too dangerous to the character, and therefore rarer than it should have been, based on his preferences? Or the kinds of problems I was talking about, that it isolated the player from the rest of the group, socially and creatively, in which case the problem was that it was too common?

I wrote my previous post from the viewpoint of "too common," but from your description, the problem seems to be that going berserk was "not common enough." Can you clarify?

Best,
Ron