[Savage Worlds] One-on-One game.

[Simon C]

A while back, [a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=21894.0"]here[/a] in fact, I asked some questions about my Savage Worlds play, in regards to my use of dice rolling, and player control over outcomes.  It was suggested that, after that discussion, I post again with my experiences of using some new techniques.  So that's what I'm doing.  Sort of.

I'm now playing in a one-on-one game about Victorian superheroes using Savage Worlds.  I am GM, and my wife is the player.  Because of this radically different dynamic to the previous group (a bunch of guy friends playing traditional fantasy), I'm finding the issues in this game to be totally different to those I discussed in the last thread. 

With the last group, I was concerned about how much my role as GM influenced the outcome of the game, and whether the idea that the players had complete control of their characters' actions was an illusion.  I also talked about some ideas about how I was using the dice.  This game has been totally different.  Playing with my wife, who's not done a lot of previous roleplaying, has been really eye-opening for me.  She doesn't have the same assumptions about the game that most players develop over years of traditional gaming.  For example, when we were first discussing the game, when I'd imagined a kind of low-level, "investigate the mystery" type of game,  I asked what kind of character she'd like to play. She immedieately said she wanted to be able to fly and be super strong.  I straight away fell back to a traditional stance of "oh, well, maybe when you're more powerful... ...but at the start of the game, we usually start less powerful".  She was all "Oh, I really hate that part!", and it dawned on me that the tradition of starting weak and becoming powerful is a hangover from D&D, and certain kinds of fantasy, and not at all useful for our game, and so now she can fly and is super strong, and has power stealing abilities to boot.  Another big difference playing with my wife is that, while my previous group really wanted a lot of control over their characters actions, my wife is really clear that situations where she doesn't know what the "right" thing to do is make her uncomfortable, that she wants a clearly laid out path for her character to follow.  This has really blown my mind, as all of my previous efforts have been towards freeing the players to make any choice they like within the setting, but here my wife is telling me this makes her uncomfortable.  I think a part of her discomfort comes from feeling like she doesn't know the "right" way to play, and being afraid of making a poor decision, but I think also she's just more interested in enjoying the story than in controlling her character.  For example: Her character was breaking into an old asylum where strange experiments were taking place.  A less powerful NPC was accompanying her.  She broke in through a skylight, and could see a group of guards coming down the corridor towards her, with a room with strange lights and screaming behind them.  This seemed like pretty standard RPG fare to me.  A room which the PCs want to get to, some challenge in the way.  Later, talking about the game, she described this as one of her least favorite parts of the game.  She didn't know what to do, and she felt like the NPC with her should have contributed more to the decision.  I was really surprised, since it seemed like a pretty straightforward situation to me, and having NPCs make decisions for the PCs has always been something that infuriated previous players.  I think my mistake was making a whole lot of assumptions about my wife's enjoyment of the game.  I assumed she would enjoy making decisions about how to break into the asylum, wheras actually, she doesn't enjoy making tactical decisions.  I assumed she'd want to laed the NPC around, wheras actually, she wanted to interact with that NPC, even in a combat situation.  I assumed she'd read the guards coming down the corridor as a standard "encounter", typical of most RPG play, wheras she actually saw this as a more complex decision, whether she was going to kill to get the information she wanted, whether she'd be able to succeed, whether the NPC with her had a better idea.

One-on-one play is really intense! We're playing roughly one-hour sessions, and by the end of them, were usually very ready to stop.  The attention is always on you, and there's no pause to think about what's happening next.  I hadn't realised how much I feed off the interaction between the players, and a range of character motivations to fill out a game.  Normally I can make things up on the spot really easily, and I feel completely on top of what's happening.  In this game, I'm finding I have to work a lot harder to keep things running smoothly, that a lot of the time I'm only one step ahead, and I'm afraid of making mistakes, of improvising something that doesn't fit, and having to take it back.  Part of this is that we're playing a genre and setting I've never played before (Supers, Victorian London), and part of it's that I can't rely on simple combat encounters to fill out an adventure.  We're doing a lot of interaction with NPCs and relationships with NPCs has become an important part of the game.  It's really taxing on me to ad lib NPC lines, but my wife really enjoys in-character dialogue, so this is something we're focussing on.  I think I'm afraid of making a misstep, and making the NPC say something that doesn't fit with what I have prepared for the story, or that contradicts their previous positions.  It's possible that I should let go and just see where the improvisation takes me, but that would conflict with what I see as one of the major advantages of one-on-one play with my wife:

The major advantage I've found with this game is that one-on-one play, where I've been given a lot of power to decide the direction that the game will take, is that I've been able to construct a game that very directly deals with the issues my wife raised as important to her character.  She's the product of weird science experiements to build a better human, and she has an ambiguous relationship with her father, the scientist who made her, and who may now be working for an evil secret society.  I've been able to really strongly adress this issue, and the game has already become about discovering her father's true motives.  She's discovered another Super, who appears to be her brother (thought stillborn, but animated with strange science).  There are other secrets waiting to be revealed.  Normally it's really hard for me to run a game with as coherant a story as this, since adressing the goals of all the characters in a game tends to be difficult.  I'm really enjoying being able to pace the game really tightly as well.  Because I can much more easily predict what's going to happen in a game, I've been able so far to end each session on a cliff-hanger, providing a really effective "bang" for the next session.

In terms of specific game mechanics, I'm starting to feel like the game mechanics are really not doing what we want them to.  Character creation was fine in terms of defining the super powers that the character had, and her specific abilities, but I feel like it didn't tell us a lot of what we needed to know about the character, in terms of her important relationships, her motivation, and her background.  I love the Savage Worlds system, but I think that what we're doing is not what it's best suited for.  For all the simple, task-based scenes, it runs fine.  But we're running a lot of social conflicts, and information gathering, and the rules are leaving me floundering in these situations a bit.  We're tending to not use dice at all for large portions of the game, which I take as a sign that the rules aren't really nailing what we're trying to do.  Part of this is also that I'm a lot more strict on what reqires a dice roll now.  I never require dice rolls "for colour" anymore.  If she needs to know something for the story to happen, then she knows it.  I'm basically only using the dice now for deciding success on really important tasks, and for determining any "extra" success on simple tasks. So there are no more situations where she has to keep rolling til she succeeds, and no more situations where she's floundering becasue she blew an important roll.  This is fine, and it's a part of the game I'm really proud of, since I think this is a way of using the dice that I've always aspired to, but haven't really nailed before.  One scene I was proud of was where she was trying to explain to her partner why she was talking to this vampire (who's a key contact for her, but an enemy of their organisation).  Rather than making her come up with a story, then assigning her a bonus or penalty depending on how goos it was (the technique reccomended in a lot of RPGs), I told her to roll her persuasion, and come up with a description of what happened based on the result.  She succeed on the roll, and decided she was pretending that the Vampire was helping her with her corset, and that she didn't know she was a Vampire.  Her partner was suspicious, but the lie worked.  My wife was really nervous about narrating her success, until I assured her that, whatever she said, the NPC would believe her, since she'd already succeeded on her roll.  It was like I'd taken a weight off her shoulders, and we happily worked out the scene, which she enjoyed a lot.  So this was a case where the dice worked for us, but I feel like I'm having to work against Savage Worlds a bit to make it happen.  I'm looking forward to using this same technique for other rolls as well though.  Changing systems at this point is not really an option (my wife's just starting to "get" the dice mechanic, and chaning now would be confusing for both of us), but it'd be really nice to have better mechanics for social conflicts.

So, I guess my questions are: Does anyone have any experience with one-on-one play that might be relevant? What specific techniques can I use to make the dice work for me more?  Should I try to "train" my wife to accept more contol over her character, or am I just inclined to do this because I feel it's the "right" way to play (i.e. It's not neccessarily more fun).

This game has been far more successful than previous games with my wife, I think becasue this time we spent a long time talking about what we both wanted from a game, and we've manages to largely achieve that.  But I think it can get better.

[Storn]

On NPCs, they had to take up more slack in a team situation, in a one on one game.  So, I think your wife is right on the money when she wanted the NPC to show some initiative.  And that is where YOU can lean on the dice, balancing knowing the whole picture with a bit of randomness.  Not sure what the NPC would do sans the knowledge that you have, roll some dice, in front of you wife.  Let her know why you are doing it.

Also, 1 on 1, relationships with NPCs become paramount.  There are no other players to lean on.  So, they have to show some initiative on their own and I like to give them a bit of flawed thinking once in awhile... NPCs should make mistakes.

As for SW working against you... Bennies are your friend.  Give 'em out like candy for good roleplaying, for good ideas, for bribes (I want the NPC to be totally distracted by the cute woman/man at the party... and leave your side, here's a benny).

Then give Bennies a little bit more power.  My house rules allow for this:

1)  +1 AFTER the die roll is made.  Sometimes ya just miss by a slight bit, and it would sure be nice to burn a benny for a definite success than re-roll.

2)  Limited "scene editing".  Spend a benny, gain a temporary contact, sure there is a door in the tavern behind her when the bad guys bust in shooting guns, spend a benny... sure there is a derringer in the purse when it was specifically spelled out earlier (I call that hte James Bond/Green Arrow option... they always seem to have the right gadget at the right time).

[Simon C]

Yeah, I should have mentioned we're using bennies for limited scene editing.  We still haven't really explored the extent of this power.  We've used one like that once, when my wife spent one so that she wouldn't be spotted by some guys when she flew in through the window (it was a random roll to see if they were looking in that direction.  We rolled to say they were, then she spent a bennie to edit that out, so she was undetected.  Now I'd just make it a stealth roll, and leave the details to her. 

Yeah, my wife was totally right about the NPC, it's just I was stuck in the old style of play, where NPCs should take a back seat.  I was burned once when some PCs were escorting an NPC diplomat, and so any time they needed to do any social interaction, they got the NPC to do it.  I was talking to myself for three sessions becasue of that.  I'm starting to get bolder about letting NPCs take charge, but I don't want them to walk all over my wife, who's a bit shy of saying no to them.

[Storn]

Yeah, I should have mentioned we're using bennies for limited scene editing.  We still haven't really explored the extent of this power.  We've used one like that once, when my wife spent one so that she wouldn't be spotted by some guys when she flew in through the window (it was a random roll to see if they were looking in that direction.  We rolled to say they were, then she spent a bennie to edit that out, so she was undetected.  Now I'd just make it a stealth roll, and leave the details to her. 

Yeah, my wife was totally right about the NPC, it's just I was stuck in the old style of play, where NPCs should take a back seat.  I was burned once when some PCs were escorting an NPC diplomat, and so any time they needed to do any social interaction, they got the NPC to do it.  I was talking to myself for three sessions becasue of that.  I'm starting to get bolder about letting NPCs take charge, but I don't want them to walk all over my wife, who's a bit shy of saying no to them.

Well, one thing you can do with really allied NPCs is have your wife speak for them, unless she is in a conversation with the NPC herself.

I've  turned to a PC and said 'hey, whaddya think NPC X would say in this situation?"  The neat thing about doing that is Players usually have a pretty good idea... and not only that, can set themselves up in the interaction between their PC and said NPCs.  I've done this in play myself, usually badmouthing my own PC in order to set up a scene or a bit of dialogue.  Great fun.

[Simon C]

That's an interesting idea.  Savage Worlds gives the player control over any allied Extras in the scene, and I guess there's no real reason that this couldn't extend to Wild Cards, except that I might want some more tension than my wife would include.  Then again, my wife might play up the tension more than I would, which would be fine.  I've already started asking my wife what she thinks the NPCs would do, which has been cool, but is a step short of giving her full control.  She seems more comfortable when we discuss things more.  For example, in one situation she visibly relaxed when I explained to her how both options presented to her were good ones, and either could result in interesting play.

What, in your experience, has been the tradeoff?  Did you feel like you lost anything by gaining control of the NPCs? Should I be cautious with this?

[Storn]

That's an interesting idea.  Savage Worlds gives the player control over any allied Extras in the scene, and I guess there's no real reason that this couldn't extend to Wild Cards, except that I might want some more tension than my wife would include.  Then again, my wife might play up the tension more than I would, which would be fine.  I've already started asking my wife what she thinks the NPCs would do, which has been cool, but is a step short of giving her full control.  She seems more comfortable when we discuss things more.  For example, in one situation she visibly relaxed when I explained to her how both options presented to her were good ones, and either could result in interesting play.

What, in your experience, has been the tradeoff?  Did you feel like you lost anything by gaining control of the NPCs? Should I be cautious with this?

Well, we did it quite recently in a Prime Time Adventures game, where Judd and I often both jumped into take roles of NPCs when first introducing an NPC and when the scene had several personalities, both PC and NPC each.  Judd and I are both very experienced GMs and are quite comfortable doing something like this, jumping in and out of personaes.

One NPC that I created, was my "nemesis" was Hecate and I ran scenes with her about twice.  Then Bret, the producer, really liked her, had plans and told me "hands off".  Which I was totally cool with as most of the following scenes with Hecate involved my PC... and then I could simply react.

But as for control, as a GM I find myself wanting less and less.  I control EVERYTHING, stats, NPCs, motivations, plot lines etc... if I'm a dick.  Which I'm not.  If a player starts riffing out a great NPC... awesome.  Less work for me.  More control I can cede to the players, the more likely they will be invested in the game.  Also, as Players gain more control, the more understanding they have of the dramatic necessity of conflict (re: your "tension").... somehow it is easier to screw your own character through NPC actions than have the GM do it carte blanche... or at least that is how I feel.

If anything is introduced that might upset the main plot metaplot or an NPC motivation, I'll just gently say; "Uh...no... for reasons that hte PCs are privvy to yet.." and leave it at that.  Since I tend to run highly political games, hidden agendas are part and parcel of the territory... my Players understand that they might not have the full understanding of an NPC.  I've even inserted a line of dialogue when a Player is riffing an NPC just to give a bit of color, info or clarification... and then turn the control right back to the player. 

Which is why I put out in my previous post "Allied NPC".  Then your wife can play the NPC as a Watson to her PC Sherlock... supportive, loyal etc.  Certainly I don't let my master villains be riffed by a Player.

I hope that helps.

[Simon C]

Ok, I just finished another session of this game, and I think it's highlighted for me, even further, that the rules are not helping, and may in fact be hindering what we're trying to achieve.

I think the crux of the issue is that my wife, as the only player, feels a lot of pressure to do the "right" thing, and to succeed.  She's not so interested in overcoming odds to succeed (which is how I played with my old group, and the style I kind of fall back on), and is more interested in exploring what her character is able to do, what she's willing to do, and to building an involving in-game world.  I'm really interested in playing this way as well, but I think using Savage Worlds, a system which I love and which I've used almost exclusively for the last two years, has really been keeping me locked in my old way of playing, and is not helping my wife feel comfortable playing the way she wants to play.  This is a case, I think, of the rules working against what we're trying to achieve.

This last session was a pretty action-oriented, combat scene, where she overcame a pair of ghosts that were attacking her hideout.  In order to fight the ghosts, she had to use her "copycat" power to take on their insubstantiality.  This seperated her body from her soul, however, which meant that every round she spent insubstantial, her body started dying.  So the conflict was supposed to be about how far she'd go to save her buddies, whether she'd put her life in danger, or if she'd take a safer option.  I thought that SW could handle this really well, with Vigour rolls to see if her body could sustain itself, bennies being spent to keep her in the fight, and a dramatic fight with two ghostly highwaymen, still bearing the noose scars from when they were hanged.

In actual play though, the scene felt kind of stale.  There were lots of times where my wife seemed like she didn't know what to do, and she wasn't enjoying feeling helpless, when her character is supposed to be "kick-ass".  I think the issue was that SW is a tactical game, but my wife has no interest in making tactical decisions.  She felt constrained by wanting to act "in character" as a kick-ass fighting heroine, but not having a tactical understanding of the system to back that up. 

I talked to her about it afterwards, and she kind of agreed that the system wasn't helping.  I also kind of forgot that I'd intended to give her more control of the NPCs, which I should have done.  It could have made the game longer (it was only about a 45 minute session) and it could made the fight seem "bigger", with cuts to scenes where her main character wasn't involved.

So, on Wednesday we're going to play a sort of "flashback" episode, while her character recuperates in hospital.  It's going to deal with the somewhat hazy character background that we discussed.  I thought it would be more interesting to deal with this in a game, rather than a static description, as it could lead to some interesting revelations, and "rev up" the play in the "present day" of the setting.  So I'd start with what we "know" about the character: She was engaged to be married, her father experimented upon her as a child, she fled to Scotland (?) to train and recuperate, while her fiancee went mad and was locked in an asylum.  Then we'd play out the specific events that led to her leaving for Scotland.  Since this would probably involve a lot of social conflicts, it doesn't matter whether she "succeeds" or "fails" the scenes, no matter what, she can't die, and it's a flashback so it's ripe for playing around, I thought I'd use this opportunity to switch systems for a session.  I was thinking "the Pool" would be cool, though I've never used it before.  It seems that it would do well the sort of conflicts that are likely to occurr, it would have the kind of "dreamlike" feel that would work well for a flashback, and it's got a low "crunch" factor in terms of character creation, so we wouldn't have to do much to the character in order to convert her over.

Does this sound like a good idea? My aim is to kind of "free up" play.  Since we will both know exactly what's gonna happen, regardless of the results on the dice, there's no pressure to do the "right" thing.  We can focus on the emotional drives of the character with conflicts that challenge the characters connection to her father, her fiancee and so on.  I'm usually reluctant to "convert over" a game halfway through, but I thought maybe a single "flashback" session could be a fun break, and be a real shot-in-the-arm, to empower my wife to play how she wants to, and to shake up my ideas to get me out of the rut I'm in, falling back into old habits.

What do you think? Is there anything I should look out for in "the Pool" that might trip me up? How to "convert" a character? Can we use her existing SW character sheet, and just write a number of dice beside anything that looks like an important trait? Or should we start from scratch, describing her as a normal "the Pool" character?

 

[Storn]

Simon.  Can I suggest Spirt of the Century?

It gives a tremendous amount of control to the player.  There are Aspects, each PC starts with 10.  Here are my PC's, Hadrian Helm's Aspects for example sake.  Hadrian is very much an homage to Adam Strange, Flash Gordon and the two fisted scientist in Murray Liester's 5th Dimensional Catapult.  Note:  Hadrian has more than 10 Aspects, due to quite a bit of playing of late and optional "experience" rules.

Honorable
East Coast Money
Engineering Genius
Tenacious/Reed Richard Syndrome
Tyrian Ray Gun (Quantum Pistol)
Man Caught Between 3 (dimensional) Worlds
Hyborean Sword Fighting Techniques
Brothers in Battle w/ Silver Wolf
Princess Alura
Hatred of Tyrants of Tyria
Dimensionally Sensitive
Tyrian Jet Pack Ace
Sees World Through Rose-Tinted Glasses

Now, in order to re-roll or to gain a +2, I can tag any of those Aspects by spending a Fate point.  You get 10 each session.  But even more clever, the GM can "bribe" the player to accept an upcoing event by tagging one of those Aspects.  Example:  I'm fighting to rescue Princess Alura, the love of my life, I can spend a Fate point to get that crucial bonus.  OR, as what recently happened, Judd bribed me by tagging Princess Alura...."She flies ahead into the Area 52 vault and something bad will happen before you can react."  I went; "oh yeah, that sounds interesting!   Give me the Fate pt."   She was possessed by an evil mind tyrant of Tyria in the vault, btw.

But a player can choose not to accept the bribe and pay a Fate point to buy it off.  This gives tremendous power to those who WANT to win.

So those negative traits are not to be avoided either, like Greedy, can get tagged a lot, gaining the player lots of FATE pts to play with... or ones that are both, like Honorable, can be gold minds of player choice.  As I can get bribed... "you promised to let the villain go if he revealed location X".... to  I tag Honorable to convince the Judge to release the arrested Princess Alura on my say-so. (and yeah, that happened yesterday's game, btw... my Princess is blue with butterfly wings...and she was chasing a martian shapeshifter disguised as an important rich socialite... Alura is SO much my Lois Lane!  Awesome!)

Also, skill rolls can environmentally create Aspects that anyone can tag and the first one is "free".  Knock over the candle into the drapes to create a distraction?  The environment has "Burning Drapes", the first use gets a free +2!  'I use the smoke to slip out the door w/o anyone noticing..."

Lastly, the powers and stunts is right in the wheelhouse of Rippers. SotC is pulp, Rippers is proto-pulp in eras... but right there in terms of powers/ character abilities and color.  SotC has Weird Science rules, gadgeteering, martial arts, ghostly allies... it is pretty damn complete.  More complete than my beloved Savage Worlds.

And it is easy to run.  I think it is simpler than SW, but our combats have been exciting, wonderful frays.  Both social and physical.   One doesn't have to be a tactical kick ass genius to do SotC combat either, as it really comes down to "are you going to spend 1,2 or 5 FATE pts to succeed at this moment and which Aspects are you gonna tag to do it?"

Now to your question about the upcoming scenario: Dream Flashback... my suggestion, make it matter.  In SotC, we allow people to change Aspects as needed by the events lived for the PCs.  I originally started out Hadrian with "Dreamer"... never tagged it once in 4 eps... I traded it for "Honorable", as Hadrian was the kind of hero who would drop his Quatum pistol and draw his sword to take on the villain who only had a sword.

So.  In SW terms... let her get a FREE Edge... that's right.  Absolutely free.  After the dream flashback sequence, (but tell her before)....so whatever happens in that exploration, the Free Edge should reflect the uncovered nugget of what your wife's PC's past.  Now.  The flashback matters, both in terms of the ongoing story.... and mechanically.

[Andrew Cooper]

Storn speaks wisdom.  Spirit of the Century is a good choice.

The Pool is an excellent system but it is radically different.  So, if you want radically different, then it might be the way to go but if you are just looking for a system that has better support for thematic play while still retaining some crunch, it might not be ideal for you.

Some other systems that might be useful to you and can be downloaded for free:  The Shadow of Yesterday and FATE.

FATE is the previous incarnation of Spirit of the Century.  I highly recommend it.  It'll do what you seem to want and has lots of easy ways to tweak the system even further.  Plus, the Yahoo Group for FATE is active and helpful.

TSoY is a fantasy game generally but doing some work to the Secrets and Keys will create the kind of game you want.  I've seen TSoY adapted for SciFi and modern Horror.  I can't imagine that adapting it to Supers would be all that hard.  Somebody may have even done it already.

[Simon C]

Whoah, yeah.  Like I needed to be MORE sold on SotC.  I've been checking out that game for a little while now, and it looks like it'd do everything that I liked about SW, but more so. 

Here's the thing: I live in the backwaters of Japan, and I don't have a heck of a lot of money.  My options are pretty much limited to what I can download for free.  Hence, the Pool.  Also, I'm pretty wary of converting the game over wholesale halfway through.  IN my previous experience, this has always been a bad idea.  Different systems give a different feel, and that can be seriously jarring.  My plan instead was to wrap this game up once the main issues are resolved, and then experiment with some more unusual games.  By then I should be able to afford SotC.

With regards to the Pool, I think something radically different is what I want.  It's a flashback, so a different feel makes sense.  Also, even if she loses every conflict in the game, her character is going to end up in the same situation in the present, so it's not a big problem that the Pool makes failing a much more real possibility. 

Storn, your free edge suggestion is GOLD.  I'm totally gonna use that.  Character advancement has felt kind of weird and artificial in this game so far, but I think this will make perfect sense.

Thanks guys!

[Andrew Cooper]

Simon,

Actually, I wouldn't be worried about characters losing too much in the Pool.  Just the opposite actually.  They win quite a bit and they have a good bit of latitude to *do* something with that success.  My experience with the Pool is that players succeed far more often than they fail but the failures tend to be really dramatic.  This is because my players decided to gamble lots of dice on most rolls.  This almost guaranteed success but when they failed....  BOOM!!!!  They lose like 9 gambled dice.  Which takes a little bit to recover from and can be highly dramatic.

Also, remember that FATE is the earlier version of SotC and is quite free.  I've played it before and it is very good.  Plus, it will get you used to the mechanics involved in SotC.  FATE has Aspects and Fate Points and Stunts and lots of the stuff that SotC built on and refined.  It's still a good game.  And did I mention that it is a free download?

[Storn]

Storn, your free edge suggestion is GOLD.  I'm totally gonna use that.  Character advancement has felt kind of weird and artificial in this game so far, but I think this will make perfect sense.

Awesome!  Glad to have helped in even a small way.