Of course you win, but at what cost?

[Matt Wilson]

Just another one of my ideas that's influenced by Joss Whedon. Angel Season finale spoilers below, so quit now if you need to.

On a TV show, or even in most blockbuster movies, we're almost certain that the nemesis/threat will be defeated in the end. But that's not the stuff that we're worried about. It's the cost of winning.

Angel, on the season finale, slapped me sideways with it. The great evil was never the most important part of the story. Angel ends up having to sacrifice a bunch of things in the end, including his ethics (sort of), and his relationship with his son, and that's what stuck with me. The world wins, but he doesn't, not really.

Can anyone think of games that facilitate this kind of situation? I think I have to figure out how to incorporate it into what I'm working on.

[LordSmerf]

I've found that this sort of situation is really a lot more dependent upon the group and the GM than upon the system.  In fact i don't know that there is a System (numbers) in place that specifically encourages/facilitates this, and i don't know if one is possible.  As for Worlds (setting and such), i have yet to see one in which this kind of outcome is specifically encouraged, though that might be possible and even interesting.

This is something that is good and needs to be explored.  Unfortunately, i think that the vast majority of players want the game in which the good guys win and live happily ever after.

So, i guess what i'm saying is that not only can i not think of anything that faciliatates what you're talking about, i don't even know if it's possible to facilitate it.  Of course that's just me and my defeatism at work, so please feel free to ignore me and develop something that works.

Thomas

[Matt Wilson]

Oh, I dunno about that. I was already thinking that the answer might be some cousin of how Trollbabe uses relationships to allow rerolls. Basically some kind of karma pool, where each point spent is a personal sacrifice that the character is making.

But that's just one approach. I bet there are plenty more.

[Adam Dray]

I would work this into the reward system.  Create a system of Achievements and Sacrifices.  Players receive points for both.  Both types of points are just a type of Story Point.  Story Points are required to accomplish goals within a story.  The player may spend the points to tweak the story in his favor.

For example, Bob McElf wants to find the Secret Elder Tree.  The GM or players determine this to be a goal that requires 3 Story Points.  He searches the forest and battles MacGoblins.  His heroism nets 2 Achievement Points -- 1 short of the 3 Story Points he needs for his goal.  The battle is tough, and the player decides that his magical sword is dropped into a deep ravine, lost.  Because the sacrifice was in pursuit of the goal and because the sword is still technically retrievable, this earns Bob 1 Sacrifice Point.  2 Achievement Points + 1 Sacrifice Point equals 3 Story Points, enough for a basic victory.

A basic victory might mean simple success.  In the example, Bob McElf finds a goblin who, under interrogation, gives rough directions to the Secret Elder Tree.  More Story Points could mean finding a map, a wisened pixie guide, or even stumbling across the tree itself.

The system does not require the player to Commit to a goal at the start of the story, but it might help the other players.

[Paul Czege]

Hey Matt,

Scott Knipe calls this my 'bomb under the desk' mechanic:

You've got a target number and a ten-sided die. Roll equal-to or under the target number for success. If you aren't successful you can give yourself a re-roll by attaching a consequence to one of the numbers above your target number. If you roll that number on your re-roll, you get the consequence. If you rolled another failure, you can give yourself another re-roll by attaching a more extreme consequence to one of the remaining numbers above your target number. And so on, and so on, until you decide to settle for failure, roll a success, or a consequence. Say your target number is five and it's gone so far that you've attached a full five consequences above it, so you're down to your last re-roll and the consequence you just attached is the grisly death of your character. Your subsequent die roll is still characterized by suspense, nail-biting suspense, because even on a failure there's hope to squeak by with a minor consequence.

I just haven't found the right game concept for it yet.

Paul

[M. J. Young]

Angel ends up having to sacrifice a bunch of things in the end...and that's what stuck with me. The world wins, but he doesn't, not really.

Can anyone think of games that facilitate this kind of situation?

I have seen play like this in Multiverser. I would not say that the game particularly encourages this--rather, it takes away part of the disincentive.

Because versers (the player characters) are effectively immortal but death means driving them out of the current world into another, many player characters start seeing the lives of others around them as more precious than their own--a sort of "if I die, I'll get over it; if he dies, that's the end for him" attitude (in many different flavors). As a result, player characters will take insane risks ("You go rescue the girl, I'll hold back the army") and even sacrifice themselves (diving on a grenade), because the cost to them is mitigated--the character continues, he just loses the world.

I don't know if you can actually encourage sacrificial play without something heavy-handed. One of the arguments against "Christian" games that make moral and ethical conduct an in-game rewardable action is that it doesn't really encourage moral or ethical conduct--it encourages pragmatic utilitarian recognition that these actions will be rewarded and those will be punished. To get players to play their characters more sacrificially, you can try to increase the reward for doing so, but I think that decreasing the penalty for doing so may be the better course.

--M. J. Young

[Matt Wilson]

Paul:

Ooohh, I like it. You've inspired me.

I'll be back...

[Bankuei]

Hi Matt,

After seeing the Xmen movie, I was inspired to write up a little something-something on superheroes.  It works with the basic Sorcerer style dice pool vs. dice pool resolution, and one of the main mechanics is that you can choose to accept a complication in return for extra dice.  The catch is that the GM(or opposing player) chooses what the nature of the Complication is, and yes, the complication happens whether you succeed or fail. Complications are divided into Complications, Major Complications, and Rewrite Complications.  

The first two are generally categorized based on the level of "trouble", but the last basically facilitates the classic superhero rewrite, such as Jean Grey to Phoenix, Angel to Archangel, White Queen(bad) to White Queen(good), Green to Grey to Smart Green to Dumb Green Hulk, etc.  This may or may not be useful to you depending on what the nature of your game is.

Chris

[LordSmerf]

There are a lot of good ideas here, but i feel that none of the quite capture (for me anyway) what we're looking for here.  Think about it this way: any mechanic is a choice at the meta level.  I choose to undergo hardship at the Character level in order to gain a bonus at the Mechanic level.  I think what we really want to achieve is something that encourages sacrifice on the Character level alone.  There are no rewards, it's simply a matter of your character being willing to give it all up in order to accomplish his goals.  If your character wants to save the world then it may require him to sacrifice his family...  Is he willing to do it?  That's what we're looking at here, it's the tension of decision at the Character level.

There are a lot of good ideas at the Numbers level already here, but these seems to detract from the feeling of sacrifice since you are getting something out of it.  There may be some way to design a way to encourage this all on the Character level, but i can't think of one.

Thomas

[Adam Dray]

You can use my Sacrifice Point idea but don't give them to the player. Just subtract points from the Goal. When the Goal gets to 0, the player accomplishes it.

It's a semantic twist but it may get away from feeling that giving the player something for his sacrifice makes it not a sacrifice at all.

In the end, I think there's a difference between a character sacrifice and a player sacrifice, and you should look more carefully at the framing of these things.

[LordSmerf]

I totally agree that there is a major difference between Character sacrifice and Player sacrifice.  For whatever reason, Player sacrifice isn't that compelling to me.  I could care less that you're making a choice on the meta level to give something up.  This is one of the reasons i don't really like the idea of merits/flaws, making major decisions outside the Character.  What i do find compelling is the idea of Character sacrifice, and that's what i have trouble finding ways to encourage.  Almost any Mechanic that encourages sacrifice will do so at the Player level as opposed to the Character level.  That doesn't make it useless, it just doesn't endear the Mechanic to me personally.  I'm looking for something that will encourage Character sacrifice...  With the impetus being the character, not the player.

Thomas

[M. J. Young]

I think that the problem you're having is inherent to the situation.

There are only three ways to encourage a certain kind of activity or play in a game:[list=1][*]Provide a tangible reward for it;[*]Remove a tangible obstacle against it;[*]Ask players to play that way.[/list:o]
Most of the posts here are talking about how to reward the conduct. This becomes problematic, particularly in view of your preference on stance--you want characters to do it for character reasons. Definitionally, a sacrificial action is one that costs the character personally and does not benefit him personally to the same degree. If you provide a character reward for sacrifice, you turn it into a calculated purchase: if I sacrifice A I get B, and B is more valuable than A. If you split it so that the reward benefits the player, not the character, you might create the illusion of sacrifice within the story, but may tend to cause irrational ingame actions, as the character does things solely because they benefit the player.

My mention of Multiverser is the only one I saw that spoke of lowering the obstacle. Most Multiverser characters come to see that the sacrifice costs them less than it would cost another character; thus the altruism is increased by the fact that by comparison they aren't giving up as much. As I indicated, I see such sacrifices fairly frequently in play--there's one described on the back cover of The First Book of Worlds, in which the PC realizes he can't hold back the demons, but if the princess closes the portal they will fall to their death with him. Because death is not the end, sacrifice comes easier, and is made more often. That, incidentally, is an entirely in-game character motivation to sacrifice yourself to save the day.

The third is a social contract issue, and actually ties in to the trailblazing style thread that just ran (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=6266">Does Module Play Equal Participationism?). If the players agree up front that this is the sort of game in which they're going to sacrifice their characters to save the world, it can happen without mechanical intervention. Similarly, in Legends of Alyria, because players are committed at the outset to making the best story which everyone will enjoy, there is implicit in that the possibility that a character will die because the player chooses that for the betterment of the story.

I don't really see any other way around it.

I hope that helps.

--M. J. Young

[Matt Wilson]

I've been doing some thinking on how to handle it in a game (mine specifically), and here's what I've got on the burner.

PTA isn't the kind of genre, to use that term loosely, where main characters die. It'd be like Xena dying and the studio still continuing the series. So the sacrifice I'm thinking of isn't the characters themselves. It's what they care about. Relationships, favorite shirts, whatever.

Remember what Buffy has to do in the finale of Season 2? That's probably the extreme example.

I'm thinking that what this kind of resource needs is related to what Clinton's doing with TSOY. You can invest in the resource as a smallish sort of bonus from time to time, but you can also sacrifice it for a major source of karma/whatever, as a one-time thing. So say you can use your favorite car as a perk in a game for a +1 or something. If you destroy it in a scene, you get a guaranteed something or other.

I do think there's something similar going on with Trollbabe, but I don't own a copy, so I can't refer to it.

[LordSmerf]

Good point on removing the obstacle M.J.  However, while this encourages sacrifice, the very fact that it does cost less cheapens the experience for me.  That's not to say that a cheapened experience is not preferrable to no experience at all, sacrifice because it costs your character less than other characters doesn't make it bad.  Anyway, even the social contract thing doesn't quite do what i want it to.  If you come into the game expecting to sacrifice then it's not really a sacrifice.  I guess in a sense i'm looking for something that is both a Character sacrifice and a Player sacrifice.  I want the character to lose something important, and through the character the player to do the same.  Maybe you really like this character, but there comes a point where that character may die in order to accomplish some goal.  The character must choose to sacrifice himself, and the player must choose to sacrifice the character.  This is what i would love to encourage, but i don't know if there's a way to do it.  On a less extreme example, the character may have to give up the love of his life for the good of the realm, the player must be willing to set aside the Second Level goal of love and marriage for this character, for now at least, in order for this action to go through.  The less extreme version may be more common in Multiverser, but that doesn't mean that it is encouraged.

I'll have to continue to mull things over, but if i could come up with something that worked...

Thomas

[M. J. Young]

Thomas, I think you're spitting into the wind. That's not a bad thing--going against the grain is the way great new things are done. I just wonder how you can get around the conventional wisdom.

The conventional wisdom is that if you want to encourage a certain kind of play in the game, you have to reward it. That goes directly in the face of what you're trying to do: you want players to make sacrifices that are real sacrifices both for them and for their characters. It's not really possible to create a rewards incentive that does this, because the moment you do you turn it into a pragmatic decision: the player does it because the reward outweighs the cost. If the reward doesn't outweigh the cost, he doesn't do it.

The first suggested alternative is to lower the cost; don't offer a reward, just make it less of a sacrifice. It works particularly well if from both the player and the character perspective the total sacrifice is less if they make it than if someone else makes it. There are no hero points, no experience bonuses, nothing to act as incentive; the balance has been tipped at the other end. I think you start to get altruistic conduct this way, but, as you note, it's because the cost of the sacrifice has been mitigated.

The other alternative is to get players to agree at the outset that the point of the game is for them to make such sacrifices. I'm reminded kind of obliquely of Jared's Squeam, in which players set out from the beginning to get their characters killed in the most ludicrous slasher movie ways. As mentioned, Alyria creates stories in which sometimes characters make sacrifices, because players driven by the desire to create a great story. In both games, you agreed up front to the idea that sacrificing your character was a good end.

Now, you've got good reasons to reject all three of these solutions. What I want to know is, what other solution might there be?

--M. J. Young