Confidence schemes and narrative control

[Jeremy Keller]

So, I have an idea for a game that's about social manipulation.  Player characters are the perpetrators of complex confidence schemes.  They get what they want by working with their fellow con-women and -men while deceiving their marks to lead them to big payoffs.  Snatch; Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels; Sawyer or Ben from Lost.

So that's what the game is about, now to figure out how the game is about that.

To start with, I'm thinking of employing a planning stage a la Wick's Wilderness of Mirrors.  The players design the scheme at the same time authoring the obstacles that lie before them.  The more complications in the scheme, the more opportunities for things to go wrong, the bigger the payoff.  Your whole scheme starts as simple as "Mr. Moneybags hands me over a briefcase full of money" but if you stopped there, the briefcase would be empty.  For each hoop you have to jump through, the briefcase fills up more and more. (Your payoff translates into some sort of XP for future sessions.)

Each hoop you have to jump through for your plan to work is a step.  Steps frame the structure of the game.  You focus on one step at a time, needing to complete one before you go on to another. 

I think the real key for this working is structuring how narrative control gets passed around.  I'll let you know what I'm thinking and maybe you can tell me how well you see this working and what needs to be tightened or loosened up...

As long as the players are successful with their dice rolls, they maintain narrative control (with the stipulation that they stick to their plan).

But players don't naturally have control over NPCs: that's the GM's deal – with some restrictions.  She can't mess with your plan and she can't blow your cover.  You'll have some sort of hit point mechanism, and your scheme can't be foiled until those go away.

If you fail a roll, the GM gets enough narrative control to introduce a new glitch in the plot: something you didn't plan for.  Nothing that dead-ends the whole scheme, but something that might make you need to come up with a new approach or improvise a little bit.  A cop starts snooping around; someone changes the password on their email.

Most of the rolls you will make are centered around manipulating NPCs.  You fail, the GM maintains control of the NPC and does so to introduce a glitch.  You win, the GM looses control of the NPC and she hands the character's index card over to you.  The duped NPC is now your character.  This lasts for the remainder of the current step or for the entirety of the next step, or maybe even long depending on the factors at play (or maybe how well you roll).  This isn't just narrating how they react to you, but full control as if they were a PC for the given amount of time.

Any thoughts or criticisms? 

[Callan S.]

Hi Jeremy,

I don't know if it's an off beat question, but do you play to win? And by play to win, I mean appreciating the honour of overcoming fictional hurdles that may come up (and whoever is giving the hurdles is giving them with honour, not just putting them there for realisms sake alone). Or is it a crazy question?

[Jeremy Keller]

Hi Callan,

Yes I think you do play to win.  I like how you put that: "appreciating the honour."  A sense of accomplishment for pulling off a particularly complex scheme.  That's not a crazy question at all, because now I'm considering more carefully what the roll of the GM is.  Is she there to play competitively against the players: like in Agon?  Or, is the game itself structured to provide the challenges and the GM is there to facilitate and referee?

I'm worried that if the game is presented too competitively, the GM might use her narrative powers to block player moves.  And that's not what I want.  I want the GM narrations to add interesting twists to the narrative: things that can be side-stepped or worked out with some clever thinking.

[Callan S.]

Well, just a note about 'clever' thinking. In real life, if it's stupid, and it works, it's not stupid. It could even be called clever. But in an imagined roleplay world, if it's stupid (in the opinion of someone/all), then it's stupid. The imagined world doesn't innately have the capacity the real world has to turn our assumptions on their heads. To varying extents dice have been used to perhaps upset assumptions (you've got a 1% chance, it's so stupid...my god, you did it!), but usually not all that successfully in terms of assumption busting, IMO. It's worth keeping that in mind in terms of 'clever' moves, because in real life someone can think your clever is stupid, but then you pull it off and they have to eat their hat. In imagined roleplay worlds if they think your clever is stupid, then it is, barring mechanical intervention (which could also be said to be case in the real world). The imagined world can get stagnant that way, IMO, as well. People too comfortable in their assumptions but touting them as realism and of the highest importance.

Yak yak yak! Anyway, onto your problem. One solution that comes to mind is that players have a points budget, and they have enough budget to block any narrative block the GM wants to come up with. The GM narrates a block, the player can just spend points to unblock it and it goes through. Forever! The trick is, the player wants to spend as few of these points as possible! There's a rating system, with numbers and if you can spend less points than certain set amounts, you get better ratings at gameplay. The fewer points spent, the more of a master of the game you are! So while the player can block any GM block, can they avoid spending the points by finding some other imaginative way around the GM block, instead?

[Jeremy Keller]

That's just the thing: the GM wouldn't be the judge of what works and what doesn't work in the game.  The players can't totally screw up their plan until they run out of "hit points."

(I'm not even sure that I need a GM - those duties could pass around to a player who's not in the spotlight at any given time.  But I'm not making a decision on that one way or another until I have this all figured out.)

Similar to your points budget, each players' "hit points" would assure that they can't be blocked.  Every time they loose a roll, some hit points would dwindle away.  When those hit points are gone, their cover is blown: they could be arrested or some angry mark could try to kill them.  So you try to accomplish your objective before running out of hit points.

As far as the overall plan goes, it shouldn't matter if it's truly clever or not.  When they authored the plan, the players have also authored the world that the plan will play out in.  As long as they win their rolls, it works.

And when they loose their rolls, the GM is still not in a position to judge: she can only add complications.  She can't say "no" until players run out of hit points.  Hmmm...I think I need to come up with some good examples of what added complications could be to help illustrate the limitations of the GM role.

[Callan S.]

I'm not sure I understand your problem, then?

I'm worried that if the game is presented too competitively, the GM might use her narrative powers to block player moves.

If the hitpoints system stops the blocking your talking about, then this isn't a problem, is it? Regardless of how competatively it's presented?

[Jeremy Keller]

It's not problematic in terms of the system mechanics, it poses problems to the potential of the narrative.  I want the GM to make the narrative more interesting with the complications.  I'm worried that if the game is presented too much as a competitive game, you won't get the same kind of interesting twists as you would if the game is presented more collaboratively.  So the issue isn't really about the rules, it's more about how I see the game being played.

My recent thoughts on the matter have been to get rid of the GM position and let one of the players who isn't in the spotlight on that particular step introduce the complication for a failed roll. 

A fellow player might be in an interesting position to present new complications because:

• they don't want the entire mission to fail, or they won't get a payoff.


• causing the spotlight character to run out of resources (hit points) might be a way for the player to have the opportunity to eliminate a teammate and get a bigger slice of the pie.

Which means the complication can't be a dead end, but there's potentially some reward for making it resource-draining.

[Welkerfan]

I wonder if you really need a GM.  Could everyone be a player in the con, each trying to make the reward bigger by presenting obstacles to overcome.  The challenges you have the GM presenting could be given by other players, as they try to eliminate you or con you out of your share.  It can be very competitive, but because they have to work together somewhat to get any payout whatsoever (no one can con alone), they will have to cooperate to make the best narrative.

[Jeremy Keller]

Welkerfan, we appear to be on the same wavelength (see my post above yours).

I think the option allows varying degrees of competitiveness.  I might recommend that players play out their first scheme totally vanilla: 100% teamwork.  Then, once they have the system figured out, they can see where competitive play fits in.

[Tintros]

Sounds like 'Leverage' (among other things) which was/is a darn fine show..

Could be built on a card system, or some kind of 'point-buy' for the risk vs. reward, or various 'complications' that would up the total 'haul' if it can be pulled off.. Skills drawn on like Esoterrorists or the old Trek CCG... there's lots of potential with the concept...