[Last Exile] Proxy characters for battles

[Jye Nicolson]

Hi,

I don't want PCs in my Last Exile game to die until the finale of a campaign, but I do want the players to feel the danger of combat scenes in a visceral way.

An idea I had for this was to have each player in a battle scene choose an NPC as a proxy - a soldier on the line, a cute vanship mechanic, innocent peasents or townsfolk caught in the battle.  The PC can't die, but they are wagering the life of this NPC in the battle, alongside the stakes of the conflict itself.  When they're doing well, the NPC does well - does something heroic themselves, gets their family to safety or somesuch.  When the PC does poorly, the NPC suffers, being injured, traumatised or dying.

Would this be an effective way of having players *feel* the battle?  What sort of structures would create incentive to nominate proxies the player cared about, rather than someone they're happy to see die?

[joepub]

How about this:

You losing a battle doesn't kill you, it just brings that finale closer.

Losing a battle might:
-Get you kidnapped, bringing you closer to a finale at the execution block.
-Lose control of the outer walls of the fort, meaning that the enemy has you blocked in... closer to your grand stand.
-have your general captured, meaning any forces on your side are without guidance or movement.
-maybe you lose an arm, meaning you are handicapped and your finale is THAT much closer.

or, on a different strand, losing a battle might:
-Reduce your Vitality Pool. When it hits zero, you enter Finale.
-End a chapter. The game is played out over a set amount of chapters, pre-determined.

Tell me more about your game, and I can make more meaningful suggestions.

[Jye Nicolson]

The game is based on the anime Last Exile, and the idea is to have groups play through their own version of the setting/story - similar themes, aesthetic and structure as the anime, but with the group and the events at their table being the only game in town.

It's about dramatic airship adventure pursuing an ancient mystery to save a dying world.  WWII naval battles happening in the clouds with dogfighting fighters and napoleonic musket lines, with a quest to unlock a mystery in the midst of it.  Great stuff.

The structure of play I'm thinking will center around that quest for the mystery.  Losing scenes is going to interact with that, and the game is going to ask the characters to tackle some hard challenges to get the clues they need (I think...early days yet).

But what's nagging at me is that some of those scenes involve artillery, musket lines and machineguns.  In the anime, main characters don't die in those battles, but plenty of people do, and it doesn't shy away from that.  In amongst your high adventure skyship stuff there's a very strong message that battle is not a fun place to be, and I'd like the game to reflect that.

So what I'm looking for is a technique to make sure the players *feel* the battle in a visceral sense, that there is flesh and blood at stake here in addition to the stakes of the conflict.

[Anders Larsen]

An idea I had for this was to have each player in a battle scene choose an NPC as a proxy - a soldier on the line, a cute vanship mechanic, innocent peasents or townsfolk caught in the battle.  The PC can't die, but they are wagering the life of this NPC in the battle, alongside the stakes of the conflict itself.  When they're doing well, the NPC does well - does something heroic themselves, gets their family to safety or somesuch.  When the PC does poorly, the NPC suffers, being injured, traumatised or dying.

Just choosing a random NPC is not good enough. It have to be someone the character cares about, or rather, it have to someone the player feel have an important relationship to his character. If it's just peasant X in the village that is affected by the PC performance, the player will care to much about it.

To determined what NPCs the player is interested in, it is properly necessary to have some relationship mechanic so the player can write down which NPCs that are important for his character. If this mechanic even gives a bonus to the character when he is defending the NPC, the player will be more willing to make these relationships.

- Anders

[Jye Nicolson]

I definitely see the sense in what you're saying - all that's stopping me from replying "Yeah, totally, that person's got to be from their character sheet" is the idea that players could become attached to characters that started out as random battlefield proxies, and they then fill empty spots on the character sheet.

So I think a relationship mechanic is a way to go, and I think risking particularly important characters should give bonus dice (a neat reversal of the GM always threatening your family/friends etc - you're wagering the poor buggers!).  I'm not sure about mandating it though.

Am I avoiding the most sensible and straightforward option in favour of an unlikely event (ie random NPC being "adopted")?

[Anders Larsen]

To get a player emotionally invested in a random NPC is hard, especially if it is to a degree where this NPC's life is close to being as important as his character's life (I have to stress: It is necessary to get the player invested in the NPC, not only the character). But I got an idea for how this possible could be done when I thought about it a bit.

What I am thinking about is these war movies where a solder, for some strange reason, get fatherly or motherly feelings for a younger solder (or some other person that is involved in the fight), and decide that he will do everything to protect this person, even though he don't know him.

How could you emulate this in a rpg? I think you have to let the player decide who this person is and why his character get attached to him. Maybe by answering questions like:

* Give a short summary of this person's life-story.
* Explain how this person can be important to your character in the future.
* Why does your character connect emotionally to this person.

This will make the NPC the property of the player, and hopefully this will give the player some reason to defend him.

I am not sure this will work - just an random idea.

- Anders

[dindenver]

Hi!
  It occurs to me, that instead of setting it as a solid/set thing. Maybe each time the character is defeated. Why not have a defeat garner a "Doom" token. A token that when redeemed could cause anyting that you would deem worth a tagic defeat. The loss of a friend, the loss of progress towards a story, the loss of control over the Challenge/mysteries, death at the end of the adventure, whatever you think is appropriate?

[muddlepud]

The NPC relationship stuff is good...but I think you need to engage the players on the battlefield as well. Their characters are invested. They might have investments in an NPC, but what about the rest of the a battlefield? If they have an investment in certain units, or places they might feel part of it all when these things take damage. Let them control their sides of the skirmish as well. Let them control and describe the valiant 42nd Pistoleers as they leap across to the deck of the opposing battleship. And if the battle turns against them, let them get slaughtered! By giving them more than just their characters during the course of the battle, there is more to give and take from - to show that flux of the whole thing!

[Shreyas Sampat]

So I think a relationship mechanic is a way to go, and I think risking particularly important characters should give bonus dice (a neat reversal of the GM always threatening your family/friends etc - you're wagering the poor buggers!).  I'm not sure about mandating it though.

Am I avoiding the most sensible and straightforward option in favour of an unlikely event (ie random NPC being "adopted")?

I think that you can build a useful framework that will make NPCs that the players adopt automatically, as Anders suggests. I think his apprach is cumbersome,  though; here is another idea.

When you proxy out of a battle, you put something on the line. Maybe you have a thing on your sheet that says "Member of Plain Blue Banner Army 15". So you're like, "Okay, I'm putting my Plain Blue Banner membership on the line." The analogue to dying, which is what happens when you lose a fight when you're actually in it, is to lose whatever you put up. Your proxy is someone that represents the connection; maybe it's your (as yet never-mentioned) unit leader, in this case. Proxying out, in this situation, maybe means that your character is in the fight, but mechanically he is not at risk; he's offscreen.

If the unit leader is on your character sheet too, then you put both him and your membership on the line; that makes your influence in the fight proportionately stronger, but you've got more to lose.

So, you're always anteing up with something on your sheet, embodied in a person. Players will fill in the connection to their characters really energetically, I think. And further, if the person already mattered, then the system acknowledges the coolness and significance of that.

[Jye Nicolson]

So, you're always anteing up with something on your sheet, embodied in a person. Players will fill in the connection to their characters really energetically, I think. And further, if the person already mattered, then the system acknowledges the coolness and significance of that.

I like that a lot.  "Ante" is the right word here.  Communicating that there's more at stake in battle than the explicit objectives is important, and there's ideas being bounced here that should make that cool.

I'm thinking maybe there should be some flexibility in how much you risk, too - so you get more dice for risking your true love than you do a friendly subordinate.  It seems like it'd be good to induce people to risk vital characters in the big tough scenes, but not in every single battle.

[Callan S.]

Hi Jye,

I'm sensing (terrible word, I know) a see sawing here, between two different things. At one point, what your saying sounds like what spiritual attributes do in riddle of steel - reward you for displaying what your character really cares about. At another point, it sounds like putting money down on a table, like a statement of "See, I'm serious about my ability to overcome this". Either way or an attempt for both is cool, just trying to see where you want to go.

One spin is that the proxy NPC doesn't need a relationship connection with the PC, but a tactical one, like a soldier is connected to his commander. So when the commander/PC does poorly, the PC dies as a complication of his tactical failure. He's getting his men killed!! This isn't so reliant on caring about a particular person/NPC, and more about caring about ongoing life and survival in general - getting your men killed means your a poor example of both those things. I think it's pretty easy to care about that.