Paying for the Villain's flaws

[Andrew Martin]

I've just been musing over my Star Odyssey game, and it's Token mechanic, which is used to balance PC 'vantages and simulates karma in the game universe. Normally, players get a token when they declare their character fails due to a 'vantage (short for advantage and disadvantage), and have to pay a token to declare their character succeeeds, either due to a 'vantage or general karma. Star Odyssey is intended to be GM-less (because I'm lazy...), and I've been thinking about villains and NPCs opposed to the PCs.

In a flash, it came to me that when a player is playing a villain or opposed NPC (ONPC), the player should gain a token when the player declares success for the ONPC, and the player should pay a token when the player declares a failure for the ONPC, due to the ONPC's 'vantages. At the moment, I'm not too sure where the token should come from (the pool on the table or a PC's player's pool) or be paid to (the pool on the table or a PC's player's pool).

I'm looking for a cinematic, comic-book feel, where the villains run wild over the heroes at the start, then fall to the power of the heroes (the PCs).

Thoughts?

[Walt Freitag]

The answer might depend on how cooperative between players you expect the game to be. If relations between player-characters can be adversarial then the mechanism you suggest could lead to double rewards when a player exploits a villain role to hose another player's character. (The issues that arise could be addressed by a more extensive suite of rules governing the competitive control of characters, a la Universalis.)

Overall, the rule sounds rather redundant to me. If a villain gains a success, then it's presumably also already a failure for a PC, so that PC's player is already gaining a token. If the villain's success does not represent a failure for a PC -- that is, if the villain's action is unopposed by the PCs -- then there's no need to invoke any game mechanism at all. Such events are narratively neutral (like Darth Vader strangling his own admirals) and there's no reason to reward (or penalize) the playing controlling the villain for them.

Unless villains and NPCs are supposed to have a relationship to players equivalent to those of the PCs (in which case they're not really villains or NPCs at all), I'd hesitate to pull the focus away from the PCs in favor of a mechanism that gives symmetrical equal treatment to the villains and NPCs. Especially since this symmetry appears unlikely to produce the kind of long-term arc you describe.

So let's consider how else you might achieve the desired pattern of initial villain succcess with the heroes prevailing at the end. It sounds like the PCs should start out with the equivalent of a negative token pool; that is, they must gain many tokens by virtue of suffering setbacks before they can profitably spend them in their own favor. Keeping track of negative token values is inelegant, so instead start with an adversity token pool. The tokens players gain when the PCs suffer failures come out of this pool. The flow is one way. Tokens are not replaced in the adversity pool when players spend them. Until the adversity pool is emptied, players must pay double tokens for their successes. After the pool is emptied, it is replenished with perhaps half the number of tokens it started with, and players no longer pay double tokens. After the adversity pool is emptied a second time, players receive double tokens for PC failures. This should produce an initial phase dominated by adversity, a middle phase where the forces are in balance, and a climax phase where PCs have (or will likely quicky gain) the advantage.

Note that the adversity pool is really just a way of keeping "time" as the action progresses through the phases of the story arc. It does not "belong to" and is not "used by" the villains; the focus remains on the PCs, and the villains actions are not directly affected by whether or not there are tokens in the adversity pool.

In the Genre Expectations thread on Fang's Scattershot forum there has been some discussion of game mechanisms intended to force or at least encourage genre-appropriate long term story structure. This (if it works) would be a clear and relatively simple example of that idea.

- Walt

[Le Joueur]

So let's consider how else you might achieve the desired pattern of initial villain success with the heroes prevailing at the end. It sounds like the PCs should start out with the equivalent of a negative token pool; that is, they must gain many tokens by virtue of suffering setbacks before they can profitably spend them in their own favor. Keeping track of negative token values is inelegant, so instead start with an adversity token pool. The tokens players gain when the PCs suffer failures come out of this pool. The flow is one way. Tokens are not replaced in the adversity pool when players spend them. Until the adversity pool is emptied, players must pay double tokens for their successes. After the pool is emptied, it is replenished with perhaps half the number of tokens it started with, and players no longer pay double tokens. After the adversity pool is emptied a second time, players receive double tokens for PC failures. This should produce an initial phase dominated by adversity, a middle phase where the forces are in balance, and a climax phase where PCs have (or will likely quickly gain) the advantage.

Note that the adversity pool is really just a way of keeping "time" as the action progresses through the phases of the story arc. It does not "belong to" and is not "used by" the villains; the focus remains on the PCs, and the villains actions are not directly affected by whether or not there are tokens in the adversity pool.

In the Genre Expectations thread on Fang's Scattershot forum there has been some discussion of game mechanisms intended to force or at least encourage genre-appropriate long-term story structure. This (if it works) would be a clear and relatively simple example of that idea.

Well, it was mostly just a start, a laundry list of things I want Genre Expectations to do.  I'm getting really fired up on turning the Experience Dice concept into one of the main driving engines of play.  (Since Genre Expectations, Sine Qua Non, and character Advantages and Disadvantages generate Experience Dice, which get used everywhere, it kinda makes sense.)

To that end, we're going to be making the secondary use of Genre Expectations such that when you invoke one (perhaps missed) you not only benefit from it, but also net more Experience Dice.  (The primary use is being rewarded for staying 'in genre;' the tertiary use is 'as a hammer' to bash things back on course.)

That applies to this by having the 'villains winning at first until the heroes overcome' as a Genre Expectation of Sequence.  In Scattershot's interpretation of superheroes, a supervillain is a Disadvantage of the superhero.  So, at the start (when players might be low on Experience Dice) getting beat up and 'doing badly' are 'in genre' so the heroes gain Experience Dice from these 'Disadvantages.'  As the battle wears on, the heroes can either use them to gain the upper hand or invoke the secondary use of Genre Expectations to win (the latter paying even more Experience Dice).  We're still addressing the Genre Expectations of Sequence in our fledgling write-up of the superhero Genre Expectation.

But this is just one application of what Walt is talking about.

Fang Langford

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Andrew,

Check out Extreme Vengeance, if you can - the mechanic of Guts is a lesson for everyone.

Guts is the attribute that a character uses to accomplish anything; his only other attribute is Coincidence. Coincidence goes down every time it's used in a "movie." However, Guts goes up every time the character is beaten, abused, thwarted, has his house blown up, etc, etc.

As play progresses, the villain's initial numerical advantage (almost certainly the direct cause of the hero being beaten, abused, etc) is overcome by the hero's accumulation of Guts.

I should also point out the exceptionally neat notion that in EV, the character earns "Fame Points" equal to all dice rolls made by or toward him. That means that if he endures an especially thorough ass-kicking, his Fame continues to climb ...

Oh, and also, characters cannot die in Extreme Vengeance. Getting stomped into the dirt or riddled with bullets or whatever only incapacitates the hero, who reappears whenever & however in a subsequent scene with no penalties.

Best,
Ron