How to determine difficulty with no GM

[TempvsMortis]

This is about that RPG I was talking about before. Okay, so it's GM-less and there's an antagonist-type player who represents the protagonist's obstacles, but since his job is to make things hard for the protagonist player I don't think it would be such a good idea for him to choose how hard something is. Now my system uses difficulty, and works really smoothly, but I was thinking about how to solve this problem. Of course the first thought that comes to mind is that you have the spectator(s) determine world-based things like difficulty, maybe with a caucus involving the spectator(s), the antagonist, and the protagonist players, and that when the difficulty for a somewhat common actions (or the like) is determined it is written down on a note-card for further notice so that people don't argue later. The thing is, during the whole process you can get arguing to slow things down and I don't know if I can do much besides hoping that the people who play together will get along. (The gm-less games I've seen so far use fixed difficulty systems like Shock:, or abstract methods of conflict resolution Polaris.)

So, your thoughts?

[Paul Czege]

Perhaps some combination of input from both the protagonist and antagonist players? What if the protagonist sets the difficulty level, and the antagonist determines consequences of failure, or something like that.

Paul

[Vulpinoid]

I've been toying with this type of concept for a while.

The current theory that I'm working with plays with a multi-scene structure. With each scene getting harder until a climax is reached.

This is combined with the idea that the better a character does, the more risk they pose to their enemies and the more difficult the situations will become (conversely, if the character fails quite a bit, their opponent's will see them as less of a risk and divert resources elsewhere).

This is quantified in a simple pile of counters.

Succeed, add one to the pile. Fail, subtract one from the pile.

Move from one scene to the next and add five counters to the pile.

Every scene has opportunities for about five difficulties to be confronted.

This has the added benefit that it maintains a level of pacing within the game. Things are easy and mechanically move fairly quickly when stuff is going badly. This stops players from focusing on the bad luck of their actions, and lets them get into the characterisation and roleplaying. When things are going well for them, stuff gets tougher and they need to think more strategically.

I'm not sure if this will work for the system your going with, but it's something that's undergoing a few revisions and refinements around here.

V

[Willow]

Agon has an Antagonist player (that's what they're called.)  They get to set the difficulty, but they have to pay resources for more difficult rolls.

I like Paul's idea- maybe you set your own difficulty, but the higher you set it, the higher the rewards?

[TempvsMortis]

The thing is, I was thinking in the manner when one does have a GM. The GM is neutral (or is supposed to be) and determines difficulty based solely on how difficulty he/she judges the action to be. The idea of a building difficulty is cool, but it sort of goes against my thinking, which is that a punch should be as difficult as a punch, always. Things shouldn't just spontaneously change in difficulty due to some kind of metagaming, and the reason I was asking is because I want to eliminate arguments - and thus metagaming - as much as possible from the process. This is the whole reason I thought of the cards thing, because in GM-less the GM is essentially everyone combined, but by having difficulty determined by precedent you basically only need to risk argument once. I mainly just don't want to have people manipulating difficulty just to benefit them. Something should be as difficult as it is, not as difficult as you wish. You're role playing, not managing some bizarre boardgame. Most of the things that I've seen work well with some kind of system like that tend to be very general systems, that only approach a genre and not a specific setting.

[TempvsMortis]

Also, what does it matter if the antagonist determines consequences if the protagonist can always make it easy? Who cares if failure means certain death when your difficulty is always 4?

[Roadkill]

You could write down guideline rules for a whole bunch of actions, this is how D&D 3.5 does it and they have got most base's covered, Actions are standardised & most DMs will agree on the difficulty of actions.

Basically you need some rules for determining the difficulty of actions, this will stop arguments, the players can consult the rulebook!

also is there anyway for a player to not take an action if they deem its too hard? possibly find another solution?

[Mickey]

I know you don't like metagaming, but I like the idea of an antagonist 'resource', ie bad luck, or even as part of its 'powers' to undermine the protagonist. This helps reinforce the idea to the antagonists (nephila) that their main role is to prevent the protagonists (sephirot) from succeeding.

So a real world concept/action will still have a real world difficulty (as desired), but maybe the antagonist can influence it in some way (through some kind of malign activity/spell/Garblefrazz)?

[TempvsMortis]

(Hahaha, I liked the use of Garblefraz...)

I know, I did like the idea of the antagonist having some fixed resource that paces the game as well (Like in Shock:, which I really liked about it). The only problem is, is that I didn't want the difficulty of some monumental task to suddenly be like slicing sliced bread because the antagonist doesn't feel like spending points. I'd love to work it in some way, but I'm not sure how without destroying exterior balance (the balance of the world itself).

Also, the sephirot are their casts, like clans in Vampire. The human form of a Grigorus that exists in the Asiyah is called its Masque, and its angel form that exists in Yetzirah is called its Avatar, and the mask that that Avatar wears (every time they're reincarnated their Avatar looks different, but the mask always bears the same mark) is called its Marque (also Mask with a 'k'), so I guess you'd call the players Avatars.

Oh, and the tetragramaton isn't what I meant. There's a think in hermetic Judaism about combining all of the names of God into one, 218 letter long word that is somehow the name of God. Now, I assume it is, but it's only the part that can be spoken by a physical mouth. In order to say the true name of God you must exist in multiple realms and speak its form in all of them, which the Grigori can do.

[TempvsMortis]

Also, Roadkill, I am going to put things in the book, but only up to a point. I can't just have the players jumping through it every five seconds (one of the reasons I really dislike D&D). And what about strange things, like jumping from a rooftop and grabbing onto a fire-escape ladder? How the hell am I supposed to anticipate all of that before hand? That's why I need some kind of system to limit argument so the moments of deciding things aren't obstructing play. I also like the idea of the group creating its own little cannon of difficulties, because then they really own the world (to a degree).

[TempvsMortis]

Oooh! I had a good idea. The Nephila player has a pool of points called Torment (the Grigori have stuff called Glory; and I mean, when players are throwing Glory, Torment, and Retribution at each other, how can that *not* lead to an awesome game) and when any sort of major contested event comes up in the course of play the Nephila player can spend Torment. Now, no action/obstacle that the Nephila throws at its protagonist can be greater than 5 + the amount of Torment spent on that scene. Of course the Nephila player can spend more Torment during a scene to increase it, but any torment spent is now torment that can't be spent for other scenes (the Torment is regained every session; I don't design one-shot play type stuff).

Now *that* is a concrete thing I can manage with rules. The only issue now is, like before, having some catalyst system that prevents extensive conflict when determining difficulty for certain actions/rolls. The easiest way so solve this is to divide certain *types* of actions among the players, so that those with the least personal investment in a certain action have jurisdiction over it, thus preventing people from wielding difficulty as some kind of meta-game weapon. The issue then becomes: how the hell do I decide who gets what in a concrete, specific manner? *weeps*

[Mickey]

Yeah its hard when all of the players have at least some personal investment in the outcome of the game (beyond simply having a fun time).

I had an idea for a system once that involved a single protagonist and antagonist acting as dual 'GM's. They were essentially gods whose purpose was to either help the players succeed (protagonist), or prevent them from succeeding (antagonist). Both GMs had strict limitations on what they could or could not do, which was further limited by a resource system. It had the potential to be quite elegant because the GMs were essentially acting 'in character', but could also keep each other in line (if one side broke the rules the other would make sure it was known). Punishment for breaking the rules included losing resource points and other deterrents.

One of the key rules to keep conflict within the game was that both GMs could not act upon the players or their 'opponent' directly, they had to do it through the environment/NPCs etc. This also necessitated player participation.

Of course the whole thing smacked of meta gaming, and would have likely caused even more argument over DC and whatnot.

[TempvsMortis]

Also, I can't really do that because the Protagonist *is* the player. It's a rotating scene system (if you read Shock: you'll see a lot of influence in all of this from it, mostly because that guy made a damn good game) where each character is the main character for a scene, and then it switches, and this continues until everyone's antagonists have run out of points or people just decide to end things. Now I like this because you can still have the characters join up or whatnot, but generally it is designed for personal exploration of the individual characters and their lives, which is very good in the type of stuff I do (also, vampire would have been much improved by such a system; storytellers always fret about how to get inherently anti-social beings to form some random coalition to be "the party"), but it still gives everyone a chance to play. It allows the individual experience of a one-on-one session, but with community. Of course this means...

Oh wait, I see what you're saying. Have two people, one is the Nephila and the other is... whatever, and they act as a kind of counterbalance. The funny thing is in *another* game I have that exact thing happens (or almost exact; you know me, the protagonist ain't so "pro"). I don't know if that really works for this, in part because I like having them be actual things. The nephila is an actual being in the game, though the player also represents all antagonists in general. (brawww I'm sleepy.. getting incoherent...) I can't put my finger on it right now, but I'm pretty sure it just doesn't work in this circumstance. What I'm looking for is some quantification of the division between the spectators and the antagonist, because I was essentially thinking of setting up the spectators as some kind of opposition to the antagonist in this regard, sort of like a legislature to battle the executive.

I'll have to think about things. These are all good ideas though...

[Mickey]

I'm not familiar with SHOCK (perhaps I should be before posting in these boards...).
Does 'rotating scene system' mean that each scene focuses on a different player (ie "player X was doing this, meanwhile player Y was doing 'this'")? If that's the case, then am I to understand that 'spectators' are players who are not involved in the current scene?
If I'm correct, then that's cool, because I now see what you mean by having the spectators (who aren't as involved in the current scene) handle difficulty in combination with the antagonist.
If I'm not correct just ignore my questioning xD

On a not-so-different note, perhaps this difficulty problem of yours could be included/combined with the whole 'retribution' thing you mentioned earlier. For example, a player could be punished for breaking a commandment by having the difficulty of some potentially deadly task increased. I don't know who would authorize such a punishment but it would be a good solution mechanic regardless.


P.S. As another example; I'm not sure what the odds of "spontaneously combusting" are (see your last topic), but assuming this was just something that people did from time to time, then perhaps the odds of it occurring might increase if you broke a commandment or three -Old Testament wrath and all that ;P

[TempvsMortis]

No, you're right about the whole scene rotation. It's to allow an individual story for every character and to avoid unnecessary "party-ing" which is sort of necessary in fixed GMed games. You keep everyone involved by rotating who is playing after every major conflict. I've also found that it gives Antagonist players time to think and collect their thoughts, which keeps stories from getting loose and unmanageable. (You should play Shock: if for nothing else than it's a really, really, REALLY good game. One of my favorite systems of all time, really.) (There's also this mechanic I have called "bonus dice", which are dice that the spectators have that during any roll by the antagonist or protagonist they can add to give that side an advantage, thus giving them an added role in the whole thing.)

As for the retributions, there isn't a difficulty. They happen or they're postponed (you can only avoid the wrath of God, but not forever). Retributions are determined collectively by the whole group (though if all spectators and the antagonist agree something should be a certain way, then it can override a protagonist who thinks it's too much). See, the thing is I have a normal conflict- and battle-system that you'd expect in a GMed system (and it works well with a GM), so I have to somehow "simmulate" a GM.

Perhaps what I can have is that the protagonist determines the difficulty for all unknown actions of the antagonist, and vice versa, but that any spectator can veto at any time, unless the difficulty is seconded by another spectator. Then that action's difficulty is written down on a card which they can reference later, and if the same group gets together can use for another game. (If you have a different group you might not want to use the old cards because the dynamic may be different, and you don't know if new people would be willing to just arbitrarily use someone else's precedent. I'd think people would tend to like to form their own precedent.)