Players Creating Their Own Opposition

[mjbauer]

Is it possible for players to create opposition for each other in an atmosphere that is cooperative?

I've been playing with the idea of rewarding players for creating interesting opposition for each other but I don't want it to turn into a competition to screw each other. Ultimately the players will be working together against a common opposition (even though they will be playing both parts). I want both the player creating the opposition and the player receiving the challenge to be excited about it. I'm just not sure exactly how to do this effectively (maybe by somehow rewarding both).

Are there any other games that do this? I'm specifically interested in what kind of reward system would encourage players to want a challenge for themselves and for other players.

[Moreno R.]

Hi, mjbauer (?) [please consider writing your real name in your signature, as for Forge Posting Etiquette, it really helps communicating as real persons]

Not only it's possible, but many games already do this.  Having players creating opposition to each other's characters is a necessity in GM-less games (it could be said that, seeing that the GM is a player, too, any rpg has player-created opposition, by the way). Some of them are competitive, but not many. Some of them have the characters collaborate against a common enemy.

One of them,, for example, is Annalise. Another is Polaris.

These two are "symmetrical", any player has the same responsibilities. An example of an asymmetrical game is "Dirty Secrets", where one player play the investigator and the other play all the other characters.

There are games based on player-generated opposition, even if they have a GM.  A couple of examples of these are "legends of Alyria" (that you can read for free before buying, here) and In a Wicked Age. Another one where there is both GM and Players-generated adversity is Carry

Some games have the players, all together, create their "adversity" and then giving it to the GM to play (My Life With Master, Steal Away Jordan, etc.), they are not exactly what you asked but maybe if you have problem playing the other games in a collaborative manner with your group, these could be useful as "little step" in that direction.

[Callan S.]

What inspired you to have it this way, MJ? Is it something you've seen in playing some game before (if only for a brief time)?

[mjbauer]

Moreno, thanks for the game suggestions I'll look into as many of those as I can.

My name is Micah, by the way. I know mjbauer is an awkward name but I use the same user name everywhere. It's short for Micah J Bauer (my name). 

What inspired you to have it this way, MJ? Is it something you've seen in playing some game before (if only for a brief time)?

I haven't played a GM-less game before, in fact I was really against the idea until I realized that it could benefit my game design. These are the two main reasons:

1) I'm designing against my own weakness as a GM. I feel like I tend to take it easy on players (and I specifically want this game to be competitive) but at the same time I really enjoy a game that is a true challenge, so I'm trying to manage that by designing it into the rules.

2) I'm trying to avoid the situation where it's the GM versus the players, so if I can balance this, everyone can play and compete and it would be more of cooperative environment rather than a competitive one. The competition isn't against another person, but against the game itself.

[Vulpinoid]

Consider the option that players only advance through opposition.

You can throw some really tough challenges at your companions, and if these challenges don't kill them, they get stronger in proportion to the size of the challenge.

You'll find that this can really regulate things.

Players won't throw really nasty challenges at each other, because they'll either kill their companions and make the party weaker as a result, or they'll give a character a huge advantage (if they manage to succeed against overwhelming odds). It all depends how you apply your reward mechanism as well, but I've seen this work well in a few loose and semi-GMless games that I've run.

Just some thoughts...

V

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey Micah,

This is very common in GMless games. 

One approach is to give characters some resource other players can use, ideally somethign that the giver won't want to part with.

Another is to formally establish authority over providing adversity - it is my job to make life hard for your guy; it is your job to make life hard for Joe's guy, Joe is all over my guy.

[Moreno R.]

Consider the option that players only advance through opposition.

You can throw some really tough challenges at your companions, and if these challenges don't kill them, they get stronger in proportion to the size of the challenge.

Hi Michael!

RUNE, if I remember it well, work like this: the players take turns in the GM's role, and they have to challenge the group, but not kill them. But RUNE is a (proudly) gamist game, and it's competitive as hell.

If you tie the reward to the "challenge", and as "reward" (I am using quotes because I am talking about in-game mechanical rewards, not the real social ones) your character get "stronger", you have built a step-on-up ladder to power. It works, but the game become competitive.

Even after all this time playing different games, I am sometimes surprised by the strenght of other types of rewards that in my old "traditional rpgs" days I would never have suspected. As Jason said, sometimes all you have to do is give a player the "job" of providing adversity, and he will do it.

The most surprising application of this, for me, was when I first played Annalise with different persons from my usual rpg group.  While in Polaris (if I remember well) and Shock (another title I should have remembered in my first post) the players don't spend precious resources to play the opposition, and in Dirty Secrets they ONLY play opposition to the Investigator, in Annalise the players have to spend their own resources to oppose the other player's character, resources that could be useful to them to overcome the other players' opposition later. I thought that that made it a game only for the most hardcore "story now" groups, but instead I have seen it working, over and over again, with different people.

[mjbauer]

One approach is to give characters some resource other players can use, ideally somethign that the giver won't want to part with.

Can you give me an example?

Another is to formally establish authority over providing adversity - it is my job to make life hard for your guy; it is your job to make life hard for Joe's guy, Joe is all over my guy.

I was considering this as a way to spread the responsibility, I'd like to see how it works in play though. I can see this (potentially) becoming a rivalry rather than a cooperative play experience if it's not handled well.

Thanks.

[mjbauer]

Players won't throw really nasty challenges at each other, because they'll either kill their companions and make the party weaker as a result, or they'll give a character a huge advantage (if they manage to succeed against overwhelming odds).

I'm thinking that I need to make it so that the only way to continue to succeed (achieve the goal, win, proceed, etc.) is to acquire some of the "bonuses" that come with creating difficult challenges for each other. That way it becomes vital that the group challenge each other to make it possible for them all to succeed in the end.

[HeTeleports]

One check against overwhelming competition among players is by clearly defining the author-ity (intentional hyphenation) over a player's adversity.

My character needs adversity.
I decide the "color" of the adversity (it's my long-lost evil twin, a rock in my path, a monster, etc.) and its maximum numeral value.
Three other players decide the substance of the adversity: numbers for stats, numbers against my trait mechanics, etc.
That way, a player is creating a fill-in-the-blank sentence for the other players, who are benefited by filling the blank to the brim (to mix metaphors.) Story control against character-specific adversity is controlled by the player involved; mechanics control is controlled by the system; degree of adversity is controlled by other players.

That rule set, though, could only act as a sub-routine within a larger contest since it only pits characters against their own enemies.
A similarly collaborative system could define the "Big Bad Adversity" everyone faces off against in the end.

[Callan S.]

What inspired you to have it this way, MJ? Is it something you've seen in playing some game before (if only for a brief time)?

I haven't played a GM-less game before, in fact I was really against the idea until I realized that it could benefit my game design. These are the two main reasons:

1) I'm designing against my own weakness as a GM. I feel like I tend to take it easy on players (and I specifically want this game to be competitive) but at the same time I really enjoy a game that is a true challenge, so I'm trying to manage that by designing it into the rules.

2) I'm trying to avoid the situation where it's the GM versus the players, so if I can balance this, everyone can play and compete and it would be more of cooperative environment rather than a competitive one. The competition isn't against another person, but against the game itself.

This seems really contradictory when you say "Players create challenges/obstacles", because if the player creates the challenge, then the other player isn't against the game, he's against that player?

If your saying something else, like players are called to just depict something, like say the game determines a pot of a certain description falls on a PC's head - another player determines how much damage, based on the description (probably with a minimum and maximum damage amount he decides between), that doesn't seem as contradictory. However, this means the system really has to provide/pump in the challenges, or otherwise it slips into bitterest gamer territory (since in most imagined worlds, large amounts of time can go past with little to no challenge, if it's allowed to happen naturally - that's the bitterest gamers desire, to have a totally natural world and step on up - but opportunities for step on up naturally occuring are incredibly rare - leading to bugger all step on up).

[Robert Bohl]

Micah,

Let's narrow a little on what you want. Do you want players creating their adversity during play? Do you want characters in the scene together at the time? I'd like to request that you give a pure-fiction example of what you'd want to see, and indicate where which player is introducing what; that would help us understand what you're looking for exactly.

[Bill_White]

Capes is worth looking at for how it creates incentives for you to provide adversity to your fellow players. Essentially, you invoke your character's abilities to contest narration rights for particular elements of the fiction. If you win, you win narration rights. But if you lose, if you've fought hard enough, the winner will have had to stake resources to gain the victory, which then go to you.

[mjbauer]

I'd like to request that you give a pure-fiction example of what you'd want to see, and indicate where which player is introducing what; that would help us understand what you're looking for exactly.

I'm not sure about a pure-fiction example, but I can describe what I'm thinking.

The setting is a near-future Earth. The player characters are all former members of a (now dissolved) special mech division of the military. The player characters will be a part of a like-minded organization or group (local law enforcement, mercenaries, corporate security, anti-government faction, etc.) in which they are now using their special set of skills (ie piloting mechs). The nature of the organization (its' ideals, values, and goals) will determine what type of adversary they will contend with (eg if they are an anti-government faction they will most likely contend with the military and local law, and perhaps corporate military in certain circumstances).

So, I don't need players to decide who the Big Bad is. It will just depend on the current goals of the group. The game sessions will probably be mission based, so the location of the opposition will be fairly straight-forward.

It's just the NPCs and the individual encounters that will need to be determined. This will most likely be on the fly, during a game session. I could accomplish this with some kind of random encounter table, but that's unimaginative and would get old quickly. Maybe a combination of tables would work, this would increase the variability, but that doesn't encourage players to come up with something interesting and challenging. And it doesn't give any incentive to the players to play these randomly generated bad-guys in a way that makes it difficult for each other.

I guess I'm looking for something between the GM coming up with everything and laying it out before-hand and everything being determined randomly in-game.

I don't know if that answers your question exactly, but that's the best I could come up with.

[mjbauer]

Wow. Typing the above out was really helpful.

I think that what I'm dealing with is the economy of my game.

I'm not sure what the scarce resource is exactly. I'll call them Power Points, for lack of anything better at this point. It comes down to the players creating a large enough challenge for themselves collectively (which rewards the players with Power Points) to enable them to defeat the Big Bad at the end of the game or even the incremental adversaries throughout the mission. Power Points could be like FATE points to augment rolls or even like Mana in WarCraft. They make it possible to use certain special abilities which use Power Points as ammo.

The game atmosphere would be more like:

Player 1: I peek around the corner into the main lobby of the hotel.

[Player 2 is either assigned to respond to Player 1's Character's actions or perhaps it's just his turn to respond to whoever is going]
Player 2: You see the hostages in the center of the room laying on their stomach's. They are hog tied with duct-tape. There are six terrorists in the room. Each one is heavily armored and armed.

[This gives Player 1 and Player 2 a certain number of Power Points, determined by the number of adversaries and their level of skill/experience]

Player 1: I signal to the group what I've seen. Anything else?

Player 2: Yes, three 50 cal. sentry guns surround the hostages. They are obviously programmed to fire on anyone that isn't one of the terrorists.

[This gives Player 1 another Power Point]

Player 1: Nice. I activate my Camouflage. 
[Player 2 knows that Player 1 can now use his Interface ability (which costs Power Points). That combined with his Thermoptic Camouflage, gives him a better chance of getting through these terrorists to disable the armored artillery drone that they placed on the roof]



This gives incentive to all players to make things hard on themselves. Though they may die in this current conflict, they have made it possible to overcome a challenge that they otherwise couldn't have.

So it will take some decision making and judgment to create a sufficient challenge without over-doing it. And I will need to be careful to make the allotment of Power Points and the use of special abilities balanced so that it doesn't become a case where the more bad guys you pile on the easier it gets.