Action vs. Danger vs. Character complexity

[kalyptein]

This was touched on by posts above, but I thought I'd second it, namely the idea of Alternative Consequences or "Non-Lethal Death".  You want action and characters who the players are willing to detail and enjoy exploring, but danger too?  Apply the danger to something other than the characters, or let them survive "death" at the cost of something else.

Say someone falls in battle trying to defend their home city.  By the rules they're dead, however that works in your game.  Rather than wipe them out and end an interesting story, they wake to find themselves being tended by a few ragged survivors.  Their equipment has been looted, their city is in ashes, and lots of NPC friends might be dead.  So they "lost" and they know it, but the game doesn't have to stop.  In fact it might well grow as a result; maybe the player decides to pursue revenge, or the game moves from a defender-of-the-realm phase to a wandering-ronin or rebuild-from-the-ashes phase.  Or whatever.

Have the danger threaten the queen's honor or a friends life or the character's hopes of wealth or status.  The key, as others have said, is encouraging players to care enough about other things that this can work.

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi,

This was my post to this thread on its clone over at RPG.net.  Thought I'd put it here, too.

Hi,

I agree.  I think you have got a Gordian knot here.  Let me see if I can take a hack at it.

Michael is right.  You need a different threat than random bodily harm if you want the characters to matter.  Because what matters about characters is not whether they live or die, it’s how they choose to live or die.  

I know this runs counter to a lot of RPG conventional thinking, but its true.  When we go to a movie (and I know, RPGs aren’t movies, but bear with me), we know the star is going to make it to the end.  They might die at the end, but up until the end, all threats of bodily harm are simply there to test the character:  Will Ripley take charge of the ATV to go rescue the marines, even if that means getting closer to the aliens which she really, really does not want to do?  Will Boromir fight to protect the hobbits even though he’s been arrogant and dismissing them their whole journey?  Will John McClane continue his attack on the “terrorists” even though his feet were just cut up on shards of glass?

Each of these are great questions for great characters.  The questions hang on the threat of violence yes.  But the real interesting point of the character meeting the violence are the decisions the character makes under the threat of violence.

So, first, cut one to the Gordian knot: get rid of the need for random violence inflicted on the PCs.  Tara was never a PC.  She didn’t get an opening sequence credit until the last season.  Her death was, like the threat of violence, a test for the main characters.  How do they respond to the random death – if you’ll recall, Willow didn’t take it very well.  And her response made every other main character respond to her choices.  That’s what the story was about – not random death, but how characters responded to random death.

Second, the threat of death must be a credible.  I’d say this means, if you want decisions and not bodily harm to be what the story is hanging on, you’ll have to scrap almost every RPG out there as an honest option.  Because most games tell the GM to “cheat”, “fudge rolls,” “and ignore the rules" to keep the players and story satisfied.  That’s just not honest.  How can the choices the players make for their PCs matter when ultimately the consequences of those choices are in the arbitrary hands of the GM?

An honest option might be HeroQuest, where death for PCs is difficult to come by – but can happen.  If a character makes decisions that press his character’s chances for life far enough, the character might well die.  The threat of death is present, but it’s based not on a random die roll (see Cut to the Knot One, above), but on the player pushing his characters choice with such determination that he does die.  (Boromir is a perfect example of this.)  In other words, how far will a character go to get what he or she wants?  Every character should have the option of risking death to accomplish his or her goals, and sometimes that risk will end with death.

The trick is in HeroQuest you don’t fudge the die rolls.  You don’t ignore the rules.  You actually play by the rules.  Cold.  And as a result, death is a constant risk, but a risk brought closer by the choices of the players.  Sorcerer is another game that works this way.  You never fudge the rolls or ignore the rules in these two games.  To do this would be to invalidate the purpose of having the rules in the first place.  They are designed so that death is not the great risk for the character.  Instead, the great risk is a character betraying what matters most to him or her.  Or, to look at it another way, the threat of violence also lets a character determine what matters most: “Am I willing to die for this?” is a great testing point for anyone.

I think you’re point about action points and hero points is somewhat valid.  In most games they are used to overcome the wargame baggage rules where there was no connection to the units and random death in the face of certain calculated odds on the battlefield made sense.  

But a story, and especially PCs, seem to demand a different logic.  I’d offer, again, that only by stripping out the basic assumptions underlying most RPGs will you really nail this very different quality.  When the Player is focused on his PCs hit points to determine whether or not he’ll continue playing that evening, the choice becomes – “Do I fight?” – independent of any other character or narrative concerns.  But if the real stakes are tied to something greater than life or limb, then we don’t need to keep focusing on hit points as the evening’s basic concern.  For example, in HeroQuest, advantages for the PC are tied to support for kin, faith and culture, than can be lost depending on what choices the character makes; in Sorcerer, what’s at stake is the character’s “Humanity.”  A character in Sorcerer might die, but have retained his Humanity doing it – a great end for a character and a good bit of story telling.

A final reminder, even if the group doesn’t seem to be focused on their PCs hit points, most likely this will be because the GM is massaging the rules and so forth.  Thus, not really using the rules.  Everyone is in a sort of denial about that aspect of the rules until its called up an manipulated accordingly.

Thus, again, get a new game.  There are a bunch of cool new ones on the market right now that I think will offer you what you’re looking for, cutting the knot and letting you get the kind of game I think you’re looking for.

Take care,
Christopher

[M. J. Young]

These three to a greater or lesser extent would appear to be in conflict with one another.  How do you balance them?

Excellent question, and there are probably many answers. Let me offer the one I am using. On a thread not too long ago, Ron Edwards said that Multiverser had "some of the best answers" to the problem of character death, for exactly this reason.

In Multiverser, when the character dies, he immediately finds himself in another universe beginning a new adventure. The new universe can be completely different from the old one--fantasy, sci-fi, modern, historic, alternate, post-apocalyptic, espionage, vampire, whatever you want--but the character is the same, and he brings skills and equipment with him.

Thus character death becomes a means of continuing the character's story, and the game is about the characters. Once a character dies, the world he leaves behind doesn't matter any more; he can't do anything about it--but he continues, and he becomes what he wants to be, and does what he finds to do.

Some referees say that the game is very liberating to them, because they don't have to pull their punches. It's all right for player characters to die; it makes the story more interesting, and moves it forward. I'm still not a killer referee, but I don't cringe so much when it's close (I have always hated PC deaths), and when I'm playing I take serious risks sometimes because I know I might lose the whole world, but I won't lose my character.

I'll note that in games like Legends of Alyria, a player character can only die if the player decides it's time to do so (and I think some of Jared Sorensen's games do that, too, but I haven't had any experience with these). I'd love to have one of them come and talk about that method. In narrativist play, it can be very compelling.

So there are ways to solve the problem. As I say, Multiverser does not pull punches, and it creates very complex and interesting characters, and sometimes they die--but that's all right, because they keep going on a new adventure, so the loss is real, but not total.

--M. J. Young

[Mark Johnson]

Be it resolved that:

1)  Many RPGs claim to generate action stories, but these do not resemble any known "action" stories out there, unless you count Tolkien.

2) Lethality is the hobgoblin of a consistent mind.  Almost all systems can be deadly lethal.  Throw my 1st level D&D 3.5 party against an Ancient Wyrm with a Lich template and 40 epic levels of Wizard and then tell me how robust D&D characters are compared to GURPS characters.

3) Interesting and complex are independent variables.

[John Kim]

  I find it interesting to wonder why it's OK to know in a 225-page Vietnam war novel (say) that the protagonist is unlikely to die on page 125, but it's a problem in an RPG.  Ralph points to one place - if ALL the players care about is survival, there's no interest unles that's at risk.  But I also think this ties in to your point 2 - about which I'll ask, what do you need to do to establish that a sword can kill anyone?  Bullets can kill anyone in our Vietnam novel - they're probably doing so all the time.  Yet, most of the time our protagonist is NOT going to be killed by gunfire on page 125.  No problem in the book when done well - isn't it also no problem in an RPG when done well?  

Actually, I'm in agreement with the original poster that it is a problem -- not necessarily insoluble, but still a problem.  As for the parallel to novels, I would say: "RPGs aren't novels."  They are fundamentally different from passive reading of story.  Just because an approach works in a novel, that doesn't mean it won't be problematic for an RPG.  In an RPG, you know how the events are being resolved.  Since that process is exposed, it means that you do not have the same tension about what is going to happen.  

My usual solution has just been to eliminate most of the tension over character death.  Combat tends to be infrequent in my games and most times the PC's visibly outclass their opposition.  However, the threats are still real -- so if the PC's actually do face an equal enemy, there are even odds that they will be killed.  So in terms of the original poster's points, I generally have #2 and #3, but I don't have #1 in my games.  In some games (the more genre-based ones like Star Trek or Buffy), I eliminate #2 -- so there is lots of action but because of hero points or other mechanics the players know that their PC can't be taken out by a stray bullet.

[Jason Lee]

I'll note that in games like Legends of Alyria, a player character can only die if the player decides it's time to do so (and I think some of Jared Sorensen's games do that, too, but I haven't had any experience with these). I'd love to have one of them come and talk about that method. In narrativist play, it can be very compelling.

Well, I'm not either of them, but we play that way.  The basics of the system are that damage has a high chance of incapacitation (which can be dead or dying, or ko'd, or whatever).  Narration of a task passes from attacker to defender mid-way through resolution.  The attacker can only say what he is doing (swinging at your head), and the defender can't change anything the attacker said, he can only add (I get slashes across the eye).  This means, basically, the defender decides the results of the damage based on the constraints the attacker places on defense.  Plus, there are options to turn lethal blows into crippling or maiming wounds (which happen to be the same rules to turn wounds into lethal blows; one system for mooks and pc's - I love it).

Then, should you reach incapacitation, and it seems like common sense would dictate that the character would die, and you don't want the character to die, it falls to the group to engineer events such that he doesn't.  Though, the character is still out for a spell; he does still get to speak, flail about, or whatever, which makes him still semi-playable - he just can't succeed anymore.  If the owner wants the character dead, then that's non-negotiable.

Anyway, that's how we are reconciling the three statements.

This is in addition to that whole 'the big risk should not be bodily harm' thing, which is dead on.  A warning though, this isn't simple - it's  easy enough to hear and agree, but hard to truly grasp how to implement it (meaning if this is a foreign concept to the group then it probably won't work at first).

[Callan S.]

Be it resolved that:

1.  Role Playing Games are almost always action stories, involving fighting and bodily peril.

2.  You want a sword to be able to kill someone.  Anyone.  Roland of Gilead can get his fingers chewed off by a lobstrosity and Tara can get capped by a stray bullet.  You want this lethality to make #1 matter (also, just for its own sake).

3.  You want interesting and complex characters that the players take the time to flesh out and make fully realized.

These three to a greater or lesser extent would appear to be in conflict with one another.  How do you balance them?

(note, I'm fairly a newbie here, so I would love it if local jargon were explained or contextualized a little if it came up in replies; I'm aware of The Forge's particular patois, just not familiar with it)

Fate points?

And if you want to be evil, an unknown amount of fate points for each character (Tara thought she had some left, mebe!)

I'm guessing you've heard of them in warhammer fantasy RP. Some sort of derivitive of them should pretty much answer this simply. To answer it in a more complex way...I dunno, I don't have an answer.

[M. J. Young]

Be it resolved that:

1)  Many RPGs claim to generate action stories, but these do not resemble any known "action" stories out there, unless you count Tolkien.

I'm not sure whether this is supposed to be a blanket statement that RPGs don't create other kinds of action stories, or a narrow criticism that there are some RPGs that don't do so. I've seen a lot of action stories in Multiverser. They have resembled Prisoner of Zenda, Most Dangerous Game, Justice League Comics, Blake's 7, Fairy Tales, Die Hard, James Bond, and types for which I have no names.

I've been in some action stories in Star Frontiers, too, that were quite memorable.

Now if you mean that there are some games that say they generate action stories and don't deliver, that's certainly true; but if you're suggesting that no games create good action stories, I think that's a rather jaded view of things.

--M. J. Young

[Mark Johnson]

M.J.,

Mea Culpa.  Perhaps a better phrasing would have been:  "Many RPGs that claim to generate action stories do not create action stories resembling any known "action" story in existence (minus Tolkien)."  I.E. out of the group that was making the claim, many do not meet my criteria, not that there are no games that meet my criteria.  I have definitely heard good things about Multiverser Actual Play in regards to creating this kind of story.  And there are games that deliver exciting play that still don't look much like an action story.

What a mouthful.

Thanks for pointing that out, I didn't reread it at any point to see that I was making a point other than I intended.  It was good to have the chance to clarify this.

Talk Soon,
Mark

[Robert Bohl]

Sorry about the delay in my follow through on this thread.  I plan on going through and replying to posts where replies are helpful.

I wanted to say that I've been considering adopting an alternate "hit points" system where there are only three wound levels, battered (bruised, scratched, nicked), wounded and dead/on death's door.

After all, what other states or levels are dramatically important?

[Shreyas Sampat]

In response to your question, Rob, and seaking from a designer's standpoint:

It's much more illuminating to think in terms of useful game mechanics rather than important ones.  So, do you think you would find it useful to have more than three wound levels?

[Robert Bohl]

On your number 3 - do you mean to include interesting and complex behavior by those charcaters as play continues?  Because that's where the real conflict occurs, right?

I guess a better way to put it would be, "up front and during play."

I can't find it at the moment, but somewhere on the web there's an excellent "simulation" of D-Day to play through - players create characters, and then experience things like "encounter machine gun nest - roll D6.  1,2,3 or 4 - you're dead."  As a regular thing, that doesn't sound too fun to me.

You have a point.  Again, I'll have to restate.  It's important to me that it's credible to players that a guy with a knife can kill you.  Think of D&D (put away the torches!).  Almost anyone can come at you with a dagger and you're not going to be that worried.  That's just as bad (if not worse) as the standard complaint about D&D hit points where you set up the situation of a 200 hit point fighter choosing to leap off a 300 foot cliff because he can take it.

But that problem isn't unique to D&D, I don't think.  And my concern about stunting or hero point mechanics is it doesn't address this threat of death.

Which leaves us to determine what "done well" means.  For which we may need specific examples - can you give a sample of a play experience where the interplay of the three things you mention resulted in an unstaisfying RPG experience for all/most involved?  Maybe that'd help - because there are many, MANY ways to answer that "what's done well?" question.

This is true.  If I were going to give you specific examples, however, I would have to lay out my entire role playing history up to this point, pretty much.  I've never been satisfied with the "lethality problem".  Right now I'm running Arcana Unearthed (because I like the world, and because d20 is McGaming--everyone knows what to expect--and because my group doesn't like gourmet food).  While I find a lot at my fingertips to enjoy, I have basically given up on my initial complaint until now.

Whenever players say, "I can kill them, no problem," that's an example of my worries.

Edit:  Actually, I mean, whenever my players say, "There's no way they can kill me," that's an example of my worries.  I don't have a problem with preturnaturally deadly heroes, I have a problem with heroes who never have anything to worry about.

PS: I'll add a WttF - Welcome to the Forge - even though Chris already gave you one.  No such thing as too much welcome, is there?

Certainly not.  Thank you.

[Robert Bohl]

I don't mean to be rude but it doesn't appear that a lot of this post engages my question, really.  Just refutes the premise.  But maybe that's my fault for making it unclear.

1)  Many RPGs claim to generate action stories, but these do not resemble any known "action" stories out there, unless you count Tolkien.

Almost all role playing games involve violence.  Not all, but almost all.  That's probably how I should have worded it.

2) Lethality is the hobgoblin of a consistent mind.  Almost all systems can be deadly lethal.  Throw my 1st level D&D 3.5 party against an Ancient Wyrm with a Lich template and 40 epic levels of Wizard and then tell me how robust D&D characters are compared to GURPS characters.

That's not the kind of lethality I'm talking about.  I'm talking about the inverse.  The 15th level fighter who sleeps without fear in a tavern full of smalltime cutpurses because even if they coup de grace him there's no chance he'll die.

[Robert Bohl]

novels."  They are fundamentally different from passive reading of story.

This is a good point.  Part of the fun in a lot of games is, "can I survive this?"  It's a bit of a contest.

[Robert Bohl]

In response to your question, Rob, and seaking from a designer's standpoint:

It's much more illuminating to think in terms of useful game mechanics rather than important ones.  So, do you think you would find it useful to have more than three wound levels?

Well, I think it is dramatically useful for your players to not focus on an abstract number of points and levels, and instead to focus on descriptive states of being.  No?