[MASK] Ordinary villains against extraordinary heroes

[Marshall Burns]

So, I'm working on a game about mystery men.  Not super heroes, you dig, but their precursors, the guys who have more in common with Dick Tracy than with the JLA.  Such as the Sandman (the one with the pinstripe suit & gasmask, not the one with the gold and purple costume, or the Marvel villain), Dr. Occult, the Spirit, the Bat-Man, and later guys in the same spirit like the Question, Mr. A, and Rorschach.  The Shadow also fits right in.  As does Darkman.

Part of the difference is the level of power.  Mystery men aren't superhuman, merely extraordinary.  They don't have super powers; just gifts, gadgets, and gimmicks.  And while their gifts may include things beyond the normal human frame of reference (see Dr. Occult and the Shadow), it's never to the point that we would think of them as superhuman per se.

But the important difference is their opposition.  Super heroes fight super villains; mystery men fight ordinary crooks.  Mobsters, dirty cops, crooked politicians, femmes fatales.  These guys don't have super powers either; they just have game, guns, and guile.

Game is where I'm running into problems.  These guys have schemes, plans, and aces up their sleeves.  Ambushes, entrapment, decoys, diversions, meticulous ruses -- and they're effective.  These crooks are clever enough to, by ordinary means, give extraordinary heroes a run for their money.

As you can probably see, there's a number of issues here when the rubber hits the road, including:

A) How can we expect the person playing the crooks to be as clever as all that, all the time?  He needs tools and models, and the game's design needs to provide.  And... well, how to provide such tools?

B) The thought of using prep-time to plan, giving the crook-player time to think about things, seems good -- but no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.  As soon as play starts, the plans are going to fall apart.  (We're barring railroading here.)  But we've got to keep these crooks effective, and effective against the heroes, at least enough to provide engaging challenges.

C) It seems necessary to allow the crook-player to "plan" retroactively.  Y'know, the hero goes to such-and-such place, does such-and-such thing, and the villain is like, "HA! That's exactly what I WANTED you to do!" and the net falls down, and next thing we know the hero is in the deathtrap.  But how to mechanize this such that it won't be abused, such that it doesn't just boil down to fiat, where the hero only succeeds because the crook-player decided not to spring one more thing spur of the moment?


Getting this to interact with the conflict mechanic is a bit of a puzzle as well.  Here's what I've got for that at present:

So, at any given time, either the hero or the villain has "initiative."  The person with initiative gets to say what his guy does, and other people get to say how they respond, but the guy with initiative decides how it turns out.  Unless someone (anyone) calls for a conflict in response to the initiative-guy's action.

So then we take that declared action and its intended effect, and that's the Goal.  Now we start piling on Concerns -- what could go wrong in this situation?  These are small-scale stakes in yes/no forms.  Let's say that Boss Gamboni has grabbed Lucy, the plucky reporter with eyes for the hero, and put a gun to her head as the hero, MagSeven, faces him down.  "Back off or your shweetheart is dead," Gamboni says, but MagSeven goes for his seven-shooters with his trademark quickdraw to put a bullet in Gamboni.  Possible Concerns include, "Will Gamboni be killed by his wounds?" "Will Lucy be shot?" "Will Lucy still feel the same about MagSeven after this?"

Then we get our dice, as determined by our stats:  Heart, Hurt, Hope, Gift, Gadget, & Gimmick for heroes; Heart, Hurt, Hope, Game, Gun, & Guile for crooks; Heart, Hurt, & Hope for other folks.  Each stat has a list of elements linked to it:  specific gadgets for Gadget, people who matter to you for Heart, etc.  If any of those elements is related in any way to the current action, you get a number of dice equal to the corresponding stat's score.

Now that everyone's got their dice, they bid dice to the individual Concerns.  Once all the bids are made, the dice will be rolled, and the highest die on each Concern decides which way it goes.  But before that, the guy with the initiative gets a choice:  Follow Through (get your Goal and accept the consequences), or Hesitate (avoid the consequences, fail your Goal, and hand over the initiative to the other guy).

The idea is for the mechanics to ask you what you're willing to put at risk to accomplish your goals.  The person with nothing to lose is the most dangerous -- but do you really have nothing to lose?  It looks like it will deliver on that line admirably, and I'm super-stoked about it.

But, the problem:  you check your lists of elements to see which stats you get to use.  How does Game work with that?  Perhaps the crook-player just writes his Game elements in secret and reveals them as they become relevent?

Any thoughts about any of this?

-Marshall

[Bret Gillan]

Does ace up the sleeve need to be something that's nailed down exactly? Or can it be a vague element that is used in a conflict and then when narration occurs it can be used to explain how the villain gains the upper hand?

Is the problem maybe that you're trying to nail it down rather than keeping it open? It doesn't seem as though retroactively narrating a plan goes against your system unless I'm missing something.

[Daniel B]

I'm not certain it's possible to write a crook's "Game" ahead of time, and expect it to play out. As you mentioned, plans tend to fall apart rather quickly at the hands of PCs.

However, I've had plenty of cases in the games I've DMed where the plans wrote themselves. At some point in a game, I would just be generating relevant but unplanned content, and one player would connect some dots. "Oooh, so THAT'S his clever plan! The evil bastard!" he'd say, and I would think to myself "Gee, that IS clever.. wish I'd thought of it." This style of running the game depends on two things: (1) that you do have SOME plan, so the players don't *believe* you're making it up on the fly, and (2) a willingness to throw that plan entirely out the window, and reweave a new story.

Just my thoughts.

Dan Blain

[Marshall Burns]

It's possible that I'm just stressing about this more than I need to, but...

See, now that I've thought about it that much more, I don't think it hurts the system at all to add to the crook's Game at any time.  The core problem, I think, is making it a coherent villain's plot, not one of those random-ass ones that you see and go, "What the hell?"

But the villain's Game also needs to be a sort of environment that the story takes place in.  The hero basically moves around inside the Game, as he investigates and tries to foil it.  So it needs to be sturdy enough that the hero can rough-house around in it without it falling all over the place, but it also needs to be legitimately foilable.

Does ace up the sleeve need to be something that's nailed down exactly? Or can it be a vague element that is used in a conflict and then when narration occurs it can be used to explain how the villain gains the upper hand?

Well, there's a thing about the conflict mechanic:  once someone calls for a conflict in response to a stated action, there's no other action until the resolution mechanic is played through; just Concerns, and either Hesitation or Following Through.  Stats are activated based on the circumstances at the time the conflict was called for.  All the real action takes place in the space surrounding the conflicts, in which one player is strictly proactive and the other is strictly reactive, and the proactive player has authority over outcomes.

So, elements of the crook's Game are introduced outside of the conflict mechanic, and they are either introduced as a proactive thing, or a reactive thing, depending on who's got the initiative.

[chronoplasm]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ObviousTrap

OK, so the heroes know that no matter what they do, the crook is always going to have some kind of trap. You can't get around it, you just have to go through it. Perhaps incorporate that idea into the game mechanics?

Before the villain starts up their death trap, they will usually gloat about their nefarious plan.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JustBetweenYouAndMe?from=Main.MyBrilliantEvilPlan
Perhaps incorporate that into the game mechanics as well?

[Mikael]

Just a thought: perhaps you could take a look at Dirty Secrets and somehow apply the crime grid approach to the villain's plan?

[Marshall Burns]

Chronoplasm,
Well, I'd really like to avoid the silly aspects of the comics and focus on the more serious (in terms of both emotion and credibility).  If you can imagine Raymond Chandler writing a Batman story, that's pretty much what I'm going for.

Mikael,
I know absolutely zilch about Dirty Secrets.  Can I get you to elaborate on that a bit?  Enough that I can decide whether I want to buy it or not?  (Or is it even a game that's for sale?)

[Mikael]

It is a game out for sale, by Seth Ben Ezra. Suggest using Google or listening to the latest episode (ep 19) of The Independent Insurgency podcast.

[Niedfaru]

I really like this idea. I'm new to all this, so I may barking up the wrong tree entirely, but here's what I think, in case it's of any use:

If you want the "That's exactly that I wanted you to do!" moment, ace up the sleeve kind of thing, then perhaps try to build in some kind of literal "ace". Give the villains' players and actual playing card, the Ace, or some other symbolic representation thereof. (Ok, it could just be an "Ace-up-the-sleeve Point" on the character sheet, but that would be boring.) Allow certain times in the conflict where this could be played to influence the resolution, but not completely fiat it. Also, remember that in comics, the hero is captured, and *then* saves the day. So, maybe define types of conflict during which certain cards/tokens/points can be played. This has the advantage of allowing you to give the heroes a chance to really shine in the final conflict. The tricky bit will be balancing the advantages given so that these bonuses do not act as a fiat, but as an a strong influence that *can* be overcome with enough luck and/or good play on the other side.

As I said, may be nothing, but I hope it's in some way helpful

[Ken]

Brother, I feel your pain. I've had a big bowl full of what you're going through when developing Ten-Cent Heroes (still developing to be fair). Though TCH is designed to run the full range of old-time heroes, from the ultra-powerful to the street-level mystery men like you're talking about, keeping the villains normal but challenging can be tough. Personally, I don't think the retroactive secret plan is a problem. Spending a lot of time hatching a meticulous caper that is going to be ruined in the first minute of play can suck, and totally ruin the experience. Having a tight masterplan with a bunch of "negotiable" details allows the GM to keep up the pressure up on the heroes while maintaining the spirit of the caper.

Now, having said that, and in the spirit of system developing, I would like to go back to something you wrote in the first post:

These guys have schemes, plans, and aces up their sleeves.  Ambushes, entrapment, decoys, diversions, meticulous ruses -- and they're effective.  These crooks are clever enough to, by ordinary means, give extraordinary heroes a run for their money.

I think this is a marvelous start for a list of themes that villains can use while their plans unfold. Perhaps your villain has a scored trait that measures their cleverness (or whatever) and allows them to throw so-many twists and turns during their scheme to keep the heroes hopping. The types of themes could very depending on the nature of the villain. For instance, a street crook may have a hidden gun in his shoe, while the criminal mastermind may have a pit full of alligators conveniently placed in front of his "throne". Perhaps villains can have a more expansive list of plot-twists than they can employ in one sitting, requiring the GM to pick the elements that best fit the plan. I have something like this in TCH, but think you could still develope something useful here.

That is just a first pass. That may not be the direction you're heading, but I hope it shakes something loose. The bottom line is that your game appears to be focused on having challenging but normal villains, so I wouldn't apologize for having to employ tricky little gimmicks that you just thought of to keep the story going. Think of it as the author who writes himself into a corner, and has to come up with something to keep the book from ending halfway through the first chapter.

Here are some good sources of inspiration:

>Action Serials.These are great models for how the normal hero triumphs against the normal villain and their evil schemes. Even the ones about superheroes are pretty grounded in the normal world, and its amazing how a hood can be enough to keep a normal crook from being creamed by someone with super powers. The thing I love about these shows is how the heroes and villains are always eavesdropping on each other, and how this seems to be the pivoting point from one side getting the jump on the other.

>Pulp Magazine. There are a wonderful number of reprint titles out there, some available at your local comic shop. Even the ones without masked heroes have some very clever villains. You've probably already read some of these, but I wasn't sure, since you mostly noted comic-book heroes.

Anyway, this is a wonderful era and genre to game in, and hope you get to where you want to be with this. So far, you're ideas sound really cool, so keep it up.

[Callan S.]

I think it should be remembered that overall the writers of comics (probably including any comics that are an inspiration here) don't follow some sort of causality matrix in their head about what happens next. They wrote whatever the hell they wanted. If someone got caught in a dead end alley, it's not because one was there, it's because being caught in a dead end alley was just what the doctor ordered and the writer just put it all in. There was no 'Oh, he's got a plan, but he's got a grappling hooks so...?". The writers didn't start out with these objects/things then figure out how the objects interact - typically they decided an end situation (not the full result, but the situation) and then invented objects which would make that happen.

So there was no concern about plans that don't survive contact with the enemy or what tools the crook has.

"But what's the point if it's all made up and nothing fits into anything else in any intuitive way?"

Typically, those stories had some moral comment to make. Instead of remaining within the intuitive of physical events (you push a vase off a balcony, it'll smash below), its supposed to fit within the intuitive of emotional events (someones baby is trapped in a burning house, or the animal fear of being trapped in a dark alley) to describe a moral or even to leave a question about morals.

It kind of boggles me that A: There is a fascination here with heroes and villains, which are completely boring if you strip any moral comment/feeling from them yet B: The games fashioned around who has a better plan, who has what gear, how do they interact with objects in the environment.

The old comics (and the new) put up a great show that seemed to make it feel like it was just the physical events as play
* - therefore perhaps it looks like its just the physical events that matter? But it was a show - it was bullshit. The physical events occured in a comic didn't happen because that was what was plausible or made sense. They were depicted because something that is plausible has far more moral impact at a moral level. Plausibility was simply a means to an end and not the end itself. But this design seems to focus on how all the objects plausibly interact as the end itself. That boggles me.

* And hell, the old ones often didn't even bother doing that all the time - some bad shit went down 'just because' and that was it. You just had to take it to heart, or stop reading.

[chance.thirteen]

Difficult situations here, and Im not bearing any big solutions but

a) possibly base the traps/trickery phase off the virtues of the hero? EG save the innocent, always get your main, punish the wicked, so the hero knows what they are setting themselves up for?

b) could the hero define the entry to the death traps type stuff?

Also there was a thread about trickery and countermeasures and countercountermeasures somewhere here.

[Marshall Burns]

Ken,
Thanks for those thoughts.  They've set something stirring in my head just now, although I'm not sure what it is yet.  And I will almost certainly be scoping out your TCH in the near future.  But don't worry, I'll clear it with you before I steal any of your ideas

Callan,
Whoa.  We are on the verge of a huge clash of literary theory if you are suggesting that the author should come up with his moral point first and write a story to focus on it.  I say that you get to the moral point by taking fit characters, giving them fit opposition, and then trusting those characters to do what they do while you "follow along" till it comes to a resolution.  We could bat that particular issue back and forth, but I'd really rather not.  Your way might work, but I happen to know already that mine does too.

It kind of boggles me that A: There is a fascination here with heroes and villains, which are completely boring if you strip any moral comment/feeling from them yet B: The games fashioned around who has a better plan, who has what gear, how do they interact with objects in the environment.

That's not what the game is about at all.  I don't understand where you're getting that.  The primary mechanic is so abstract, so far from "modeling" anything.  The game is centered around agonism between the hero and the crook, both of whom have ideals, beliefs, goals, and loved ones.  The plans & powers & gadgets are just an environment, and the human issues are the real show.  The world is grey, the crook is an extension of that grey, but the hero casts it all into black and white; stir 'em up together and see what happens.

The reason that the strength of the villain's plan is an issue is that the hero is powerful.  Therefore, the villain must also be powerful, or else there is no real agonism; the villain would simply be crushed.

[Marshall Burns]

And here's a thing I've been working on:  a writeup for a MASK hero named Resurrection Mary.  She's equally inspired by the Spirit, and the Bride from Kill Bill.

I was initially thinking that Gift, Gadget, and Gimmick would be given scores as general categories, but I'm beginning to feel that perhaps the traits under each of them should be scored individually.  Note that these scores don't indicate Effectiveness by "modeling" anything in the fiction (as with attributes like Strength and so on); they indicate significance in the fiction, which in turn is used to determine Effectiveness.
(There's no scores on this writeup because I don't know how I want to derive said scores yet, although I expect it will be distribution of points; but in Mary's case, I'd load most of them on her first Gift, and on her Gimmick traits)

RESURRECTION MARY

GIFT
Survivor - Mary can survive damage that would be fatal to others.  However, this applies only to blood loss and trauma; her vulnerability to disease, poison, and asphyxiation is normal.

Healing Sleep - Mary can heal any and all wounds by sleeping them off.  However, this requires long stretches of time (sometimes days), and her vital signs in this state are diminished enough for her to be mistaken for dead without an EKG.

GADGET
Emergency Transponder - in case she is too injured to find a safe place to sleep off her wounds, Mary has a transponder attached to her garter, which sends an emergency signal to her best friend Beth.

Concealed Revolver - Mary keeps a small revolver concealed on her person.  There's nothing special about it; it's just a revolver.

GIMMICK
The Resurrection - While she is not immortal, Mary is hard enough to kill that you wouldn't notice the difference.  She takes full advantage of this, allowing her enemies to think she has been killed, only to reappear a day or so later, creating shock and awe.

"Why Won't You Die?!?!" - Needing not fear violent death, Mary is capable of horrifyingly relentless pursuit.  Often she will slowly, implacably plod towards a cornered foe, allowing him to shoot, stab, or otherwise attack until his arsenal is exhausted.


***

So, in doing this experimental writeup, in which I wrote up a character based on what I want them to look like rather than on any conceived rules, I stumbled across what might be a few classification systems.  It seems that a trait must either have certain conditions in which it is useable (see her Gimmicks), or it must be vulnerable to theft or other compromise (see her Gadgets), or it must have an innate weakness (see her Gifts).  The last calls to mind the More Than Human rules from My Life With Master.

I expect that something similar could be worked up for the crooks' Game, Gun, and Guile traits.

[Ken]

I liked your character write-up and was specifically taken by the customized powers (as opposed to abilities chosen from a list). For possible system inspiration, I'd like to recommend RISUS; its a generic game system where the players choose cliches as character traits and distribute starting dice to pools which they name and create. It is a quick and easy character gen system, and the game conveniently gets out of the way of play, allowing the story to take center stage. Check it out:

www222.pair.com/sjohn/risus.htm