Character Arc Development in the PIE System

[themaloryman]

The play described below was run using the Player Interpretation of Expectation system developed by Altaem. You can read a (lengthy) thread on the subject in the Playtesting Forum (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=26838.0) but in brief, PIE works as follows:

Run on a 3d6 system, the player rolls three dice of different colours. We have used White, Black and Red. Each die represents a different aspect of the action, White = Self, Black = Environment, Red = Opposition. The success of an action is based on a standard probability curve (not rocket science there) but 1s and 6s on any dice count as 'local critical failures/successes' and force narration. That is, a local failure must be narrated into even a successful action, and a local success may be narrated even into failures. For example:

S5; E5; O1 is a total of 11, which is enough to pass a basic action. Picking a simple lock, for instance. However, the local failure on Opposition might mean that, though you succeeded in picking the lock, the lock itself (the 'opposition') is broken, so you will not now be able to replace the lock afterward, so you cannot pass undetected. Hopefully, this will become clear through the narrative, as I'm already pushing my luck, I think, packing all this into a post in 'Actual Play'!

This relates to the way the system of PIE affected not only the basic, moment to moment game play (something it is eminently well designed to do) but even the long term development of my character, Gabriel. I found it fascinating how PIE would help me build my character, and ultimately, create a satisfying narrative arc that I developed both on-the-fly and retrospectively.

The game is set in the Australian 'wing' of the Fall Out Universe, though it owes more to the second game than the latest. I'll post what I have to say in multiple sections, because it's going to be long!

[themaloryman]

Pre-game Background

Seven years before the start of the game, Gabriel was the programmer of farming machinery for a small farming community off the main track between two towns, Ridleyton and York. Different caravans would use the track, and one night a slaver caravan passed by which was down on quota. They raided the farming community, badly wounding Gabriel, killing his wife Alana, and taking his daughter Claire in order to sell her at York. After a long recovery – several weeks – Gabriel travelled to York in search of his daughter and the slavers. They were of course long gone, but Gabriel followed every lead he could get, and tried for four years to hunt them down. In that time he became quite a proficient fighter and adventurer, and managed to get the name of the slaver who had held the Ridleyton to York run at the time his daughter was taken: Davidge. After four years however, Gabriel found himself in Rebroken Hills, a dusty coal mining town in the middle of nowhere. He spoke with the town's local doctor, Painless Jackson, who talked him into settling down as a programmer for one of the local mines, and also introduced him to Jet, a stimulant drug that made Gabriel feel a little better. Without ever saying as much, Gabriel gave up on ever finding Claire – the average lifespan of a child slave once they are taken is four years, and that time was up. Gabriel managed to settle into a routine, working the mines for three years, and even making a few friends, most notably a man called Johnson, a fellow miner.

[themaloryman]

Chapter One: Rebroken Hills.
The following encompasses about the first three sessions of play, from the start of the game to the time Gabriel and Johnson left Rebroken Hills.

After three years as a miner for Morning Star Mines, Gabriel was told that he was being let go. One of the mining diggers had been damaged in an accident, and could not be repaired without buying expensive replacement parts. Around 30 miners lost their jobs as the mine tried to cut costs to compensate. Given a measly payout of around $200, Gabriel and Johnson went out and got drunk and high for the night. The following day, hung over and not thinking clearly, the pair of them decided that the best way to get their jobs back would be to raid their competitors' mine, Kookaburra, for the parts required to make their repairs. That night then, after buying supplies (notably some big knives), they went to the Kookaburra Mine site, and murdered two guards. Emotionally empty and morally bankrupt, Gabriel thought very little of this, but did pause long enough to properly consider the security of the mine. He and Johnson realised that trying to break in would be a suicide mission, so they stripped the guards of their weapons and armour, hid the bodies as best they could, and left. Realising that there would be no getting their jobs back, the pair instead decided that their new financial position (broke!) would suit them to business in the slum areas, and went to investigate. Here they met Jimmy, who offered to sell them Jet that they could sell on. He also agreed to buy the armour they had taken from the guards the night before, which brought some much needed financial relief, as well as neatly disposing of the evidence.

Hanging around in the slums, Gabriel and Johnson were offered numerous jobs, including one that would require a certain amount of demolitions equipment. Hoping to borrow this from their old boss, Dan, Gabriel and Johnson headed back to Morning Star by night to try to speak with him. As they approached they realised that there were Kookaburra guards loitering outside the Morning Star complex. Believing that Kookaburra must be launching an assault on their competitors, possibly in retaliation for the deaths of the two guard the night before, Gabriel and Johnson attacked and immobilised all three guards.

At this point we had our first triple-6 score of the game, Deathglider rolling for Johnson to throw one of his knives with pin-point accuracy to kill one of the three.

As they were securing the remaining two living guards, Gabriel and Johnson realised that there were other guards watching and covering them, not opening fire because there were Morning Star guards too close to be certain of a good shot. The situation developed into a stand-off, during which it came out that the guards were only there to investigate the deaths of two of their colleagues the night before, killed with knives. Johnson's astonishingly successful kill moments before, coupled with the stunned surprise that they had been identified, marked the pair indelibly as the culprits. They escaped with their lives, just, but Rebroken Hills was no longer a place they could afford to stay, as Morning Star would likely bring its considerable influence in town to bear on killing them both.

Returning to Jimmy, Gabriel pointed out that if they were taken it would inevitably emerge that they had sold the armour to him, and he had done nothing about it. He therefore agreed to help them escape Rebroken Hills if at all possible.

Interestingly enough, I had not developed Gabriel's background at this point in the game, and only at the conclusion of the next chapter, The Slave Caravan, did I do that. I wrote it retrospectively of course, creating a background that would fit with Gabriel's behaviour, but many little details which fitted so nicely were purely accidental. For instance, though it would make sense that a man in his position might do something as senseless as murder a pair of guards in a futile quest that ended in nothing but the pillaging of their guns and armour, that wasn't the idea at the time. It was simply the desperate flailing of two players trying to find their way around a world they hadn't played before, and learning the hard way that, here at least, the dead have surviving friends, and they might come and try to kill you afterwards!

[themaloryman]

Chapter Two: The Slave Caravan
This was a single play session, very linear, and designed to give us an idea of the ferocity of the land between settlements. It also produced our first PVP incident – something which became a theme of this campaign. There were four players – myself and Deathglider, Shadow_80 as Mickey the medic, and another friend, an RPG virgin who has not since returned and probably won't, I suspect, as a caravan guard.

After hiding out on the outskirts of town for a little while, Gabriel and Johnson got word from Jimmy that he had found them a way out of town. Though the coal caravans were being carefully checked by the Morning Star guards to prevent the pair leaving, the slave vans were left alone, protected by the slavers' nasty reputation. Gabriel and Johnson could leave as half-pay caravan guards if they chose. Having no other option, they went for it.

As a person, I have very strong feelings on slavery, and was shocked to learn recently that it is still an issue today. (See http://www.donttradelives.com.au/dtl/ if you want to know more about this!) I decided early on to play my character the same way, as it would come more naturally, so concluded that Gabriel had some issues with slavery. I had not yet decided what they would be.

'Mounting up', so to speak, Gabriel and Johnson rode out of Rebroken Hills, relieved to be leaving it, and their mistakes, behind them. The first day's travel was uneventful (though thanks to a critical local failure on 'Self', Johnson passed out from dehydration resulting from a hangover) but on the second day the caravan was attacked by bandits. The guards fought them off, but in the process Gabriel was badly wounded. This was his first serious wound in seven years and (though as a player I didn't know it yet!) it brought the memories of his past flooding back. As he lay, tended by Mickey the medic, Gabriel thought again of Claire and of Alana, and of everything that had been taken from him.

A couple of days later, with Gabriel back on his feet, if not completely well again, the guards were told that this caravan was under quota, and that a raid would be organised on a nearby settlement to take some fresh people. Having made friends with one of the caravan guards (our visiting player's character, imaginatively named Scorpion) Johnson agreed to go on the raid. Gabriel argued strongly against it, but neither could convince the other.

Our rolls were very similar. Both scored fairly well in Self and Environment, but scored critical failures in Opposition – that is, in our effect on each other. We therefore concluded that, while we had both mounted our arguments to the best of our ability, academically speaking, neither had convinced the other, and we had only made each other angry.

It was the start of Gabriel and Johnson drifting into very different paths. Johnson went on the raid, but when he came back, Gabriel, still furious, tried to make Johnson feel guilty and, this time, succeeded. It didn't help the relationship.

The caravan arrived in Reno, its destination, without further incident.

It was at this point that I decided to create a background, and came up with the one at the top of this explanation.

[themaloryman]

Chapter 3: The File
From this point on I was playing with my character's background in mind.

Arriving in Reno, Gabriel and Johnson decided to work with another of the caravan guards, Balrog (played by another visiting player) who was hanging around in town to earn a little extra cash, if possible. As they were looking around, the three were spotted by Ezekiel Smith, a man with a plan. Smith said that he had been commissioned by the Salvatore family, one of the four large crime families in the city, to steal a computer part from the Bishops, one of their rivals. The part was stored in Mr Bishop's personal safe, in his residence upstairs from the casino run by his family. The three took the job, and following a lead offered by Smith, began a badly unsuccessful process of trying to threaten a Bishop employee into bringing us the device. (The whole affair degenerated into farce which I will not bother to relate – RPG at its most disorganised, baffled and pointless.) However, after one total failure of an attempt, Gabriel fell back on territory that had been more familiar to him three years before: direct incursion.

Between the four people involved, a plan was derived that called for Balrog and Smith to head back to a Salvatore pub and start up a spontaneous pub-crawl, heading early on to the Bishops' casino. At the same time, Johnson and Gabriel, working together, if still not on the closest speaking terms, prepared grapnels, lock-picks, silenced weapons and, in case of emergency, grenades, on the roof of the neighbouring building. When the mob arrived at the casino, and had been inside for a little while, Balrog and Smith contrived to start a bar-fight. As security's attention was gradually turned to the ground floor, Gabriel and Johnson crossed to the roof of Bishop's building. There was a swimming pool on the roof, as well as associated furniture and a door to the inside. Gabriel picked the lock and, taking the lead, began to investigate the rooms inside. The first room was clearly a bunk room for security, so the pair left it alone, moving on. The next room seemed to be a teenager's bedroom, probably Bishop's daughter's. A cursory search revealed a safe behind a picture, which Gabriel was able to break into with little difficulty. Inside was a bit of cash (a lot of cash by the adventurers' standards, at that point) and some jewellery. Lifting the lot, Gabriel and Johnson moved on.

Meanwhile, Balrog and Smith had escalated the situation below, setting fire to one of the tables using spilt alcohol, and the ruckus was growing. Balrog and Smith made their exit, leaving with a press of other people fleeing the room. Though they knew the plan, Gabriel and Johnson did not know how things were coming along, so they moved on to the next room. In it they found a woman sleeping in a large bed. As they entered, she sat up, staring straight ahead, and cried out in fear. It was obvious that she was just waking from a nightmare and had not yet got her bearings, but not wanting to give her the chance to, Gabriel crossed the room and sent her back to sleep with the back end of his SMG. It was neatly done, and she went out like a light. Pausing for a moment to listen for any guards rushing to help, Johnson heard a comment that Mrs Bishop had got over her nightmare much more quickly than usual tonight. Quickly searching the room, Gabriel located another safe, and successfully opened it. It contained more jewellery, more cash and a dossier, but no computer part. Hearing the sound of the scuffle below growing more heated, the pair made a decision that they would give up and go, that the file would surely be worth enough to compensate for not finding the computer part, and they fled. Their escape was largely uneventful, and though guards came onto the roof as they were fleeing, the guards were there to collect buckets of water from the swimming pool, and were a little pre-occupied.

Before trying to decide on a buyer for the file, the group all had a look through it. Most of it was of little personal interest to Gabriel, though anyone could see the value to one of the other crime lords. However, there was mention of Davidge in the file – last heard of down in the New Victorian Republic – and also of a man named Saul, Davidge's second in command from seven years previously. Saul was now employed as the head of security at a slave farm run by the third of the large Reno crime families, the Mordinos. Gabriel had his next lead.

It occurs to me reading this that PIE did not play a huge role in this session for Gabriel. Still, hope it wasn't too tedious to read.

[Callan S.]

Hi,

Do players have and know they have the option to retire characters? Like say when the mine shut down, could the player have said the character just gives up and goes somewhere to start subsistance farming, or work as a bartender, or whatever and that's it, he wont be focused on in any further gaming?

[themaloryman]

Well, sure, I guess I could have done that. But seeing as how the mine closed in the first minute of the first session of this campaign, that would have been a smidgen futile... However, assuming that your example is just that - an example - my less flippant response would be that characters can be retired (because really, who could stop me if I want to do that?) and in fact this one has now been retired, having reached a logical and satisfying narrative close.

However, this thread is, I realise, boring as bat-sh*t, and I'm not going to be continuing it. I know Altaem, my GM, was thinking of starting a thread called 'Golden Moments in PIE', or something to that effect, just to cover the bare essentials of what really worked well in the PIE-system run games. I think it will make for more informative reading than having to sift the dross of this post to find the odd gem of an event. So go look for that. And if you read all the way to the bottom before finding this note, well, sorry!

[Callan S.]

Sorry, I'd read the four year search and its resolution (giving up on finding his daughter) as part of an actual play account. Bad reading on my part.

[themaloryman]

Oh, okay, that makes a lot more sense! It was a valid question though, even if you didn't choose the best example. And my answer stands. Retiring characters is do-able.

[JoyWriter]

I notice that your character suddenly gained a past from the themes you thought were interesting and as a way to come back from sociopathy. I notice this seems a pretty common way for characters to behave in games I've been in: The player jiggles their character around at first, either playing it cagey, funny or really psycho, and then suddenly spreads into life.

Every game I play with one of my friends he starts with a comedy character until he gains a history, finds something to be heroic about and gets all the players to love him! (well me at least) This guy then gives his character it's own staring role in some fiction or other RPG he runs, and is pretty happy with it, although he often accompanies this with retiring the character, which I don't like so much. It seems a bit like he tries to make light hearted characters in sometimes deeply harsh worlds, and then finds a new way for that basic theme to properly interact with what is happening and that spontaneously produces the rest of the character. As it gains a place in the world thematically, the actual beginnings fall into place.

On the subject of PIE, how do you deal with self-other dice in two pvp situations? Say one gets a 6 for himself and a 1 for other, and the opponent the same? Do you require non-exclusive goals so they can both win and lose?

[Callan S.]

I'm extra confused now! Was the four year search written before any play had happened, or written after some amount of play had occured?

[themaloryman]

@CallanS
The four year search 'occurred' before any of the play, but was written by me at the end of the Slave Caravan chapter.

@Joy Writer
Not sure what point you were trying to make or if you were just telling an anecdote. However, I think my response would be that, not being familiar with the world I was playing, I really just played on the fly for a bit, then developed my character once I knew a bit more.

Regarding the mechanics of PIE, I linked to an extremely lengthy post in the Playtesting forum at the top of this thread, so you might to best to read that. I think PVP interaction is covered on about page 4, though it might be slightly earlier.

[JoyWriter]

It was an anecdote pretty much, with a theme to combine your experience and mine. I was considering how common I have found the same process you went through, for certain players at least. To be a bit more useful, do you find that happens often, and is it related to the depth of the world?

My own thinking is that when the world has a strong existing identity you need more time to get a handle on it, and I was pondering that difference between playing on the fly and characters that have history. I notice that during the first part you sort of added parts of the world to your character as you went, did that continue when you had a history and a kicker of sorts? I know in the case of my friend that he really gets into his stride when he has a feel for the characters voice, did you find development easier after a background kicks in?
I personally tend to concept my characters history from the ground up, in sweeping form, and then shift it in small amounts afterwards, so I don't tend to have this phenomenon, although it could perhaps lead to less work if I got the hang of it.

In my last post I added the comment about conflict mechanics both for my curiosity and to try to stay within the bounds of the thread title. How are you relating those two things - arcs and the conflict mechanic? Or is their a part of the system that you haven't mentioned that effects character development? Or alternatively where you just mentioning the system for context? Basically I'm trying to get a handle on what you want to talk about here, for speed and enjoyment for both of us.

[themaloryman]

@ JoyWriter: Fair comments. This thread was initially supposed to be an examination of how the PIE System has, by it's little quirks and random events, contributed to the development of my character. However, it has become obvious to me that these little 'golden moments' are a bit too infrequent to warrant a full character write up. That's just my failing. However, as I said, I think Altaem plans to start up a similar but more succinct thread called 'Golden Moments in PIE', so I'm hesitant to clutter an already largely pointless thread. However, once Altaem get's his backside in gear and posts I'll be sure to link to that from here so you can get your question answered.

I think you're right about character development more generally, for me at least: I find that as a rule I try to create 'survival' characters for any new RPG - that is, balanced enough to fight or talk their way out of a situation. This leads to a certain lack of variety on my part, I suppose, but it does mean I generally avoid getting killed long enough to get a handle on the world. I don't normally create a detailed character background because often I'm not that familiar with the worlds we're going to play, though obviously I get to know them as we go. That stands for the last three games I've played under Altaem's GMing, set in the Vampire, Necromunda and FallOut Universes respectively. I've tried to get a feel for what's going on before worrying about character background. In fact, the only exception to this 'generic character' technique of mine was when I was playing a Star Wars RPG a few years ago. Since I was pretty familiar with the SW Expanded Universe I was comfortable writing up a detailed background. But I was really just a kid then, so 'in-depth play' wasn't something I did. I suppose if I were to play another universe I knew better (anything I've played long enough to get an understanding of, or whatever) I would create my character in advance. Altaem as a GM has begun now to allow his players almost to 'co-write' the worlds we play, so we can create places and people specifically for our backgrounds, and even include those people in play if we can achieve something that will justify that. That makes it a lot easier to write backgrounds that make for compelling characters and satisfying play, narrative and general 'arc'.

Hope I expressed myself better this time that I obviously did last time!

[Altaem]

I think Altaem plans to start up a similar but more succinct thread called 'Golden Moments in PIE', so I'm hesitant to clutter an already largely pointless thread. However, once Altaem get's his backside in gear and posts I'll be sure to link to that from here so you can get your question answered.

link here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=27287.0