[Amber] Playing with Strict Karma

[TonyLB]

[ Spawned from this thread ]

I've taken on, largely through foolhardiness, the interesting task of running Narrativist Amber.  And here we are with some more running commentary on its progress.

The rules-drift I'm most satisfied with, so far, is to clarify that attributes, where applicable, are king.  They trump tactics, they trump resources, they sure as heck trump how beautifully you describe your characters actions.

This has made it so easy to adjudicate one-on-one combats.  You look at the stats, and you know immediately who's going to lose, how badly, and how quickly it's going to happen.  Unequal sides can make this harder to judge, since there's no straightforward way to measure whether (for example) the 3rd-rank and 4th-rank guys can, together, take down a 1st rank holder.  But since alliances in Amber have a half-life measured in milliseconds, this doesn't happen too often.

Be warned:  this is the stuff of nightmares for players who are heavily into tactical play.  You're essentially saying "All that stuff about maneuvering and gaining advantage?  We're skipping that".  Warn them explicitly, warn them often.  I didn't.  My bad.  It was ugly.

But for folks who come to a combat saying "Win or lose, my character is going to shine in this situation", I think this rule really works well.  It frees them from having to concentrate on the tactics and logistics.  When they know (for example) they're going to lose... well then the important thing is to lose with style.

It's also fostered a different attitude toward conflict as a story element.  I have seen far less characters seeking out situations where victory is the only goal.  Instead they're going into combat saying things like "It'd be nice to win, but the real point is to look good in front of my father... so I'll do some fancy, risky moves, even if they haven't got a snowballs chance of working."  It's too simplistic to say that combats have become a tool in the service of character agendas, rather than vice-versa, but I think it's something similar to that.

Edit: I don't know whether Ron will want to be at all associated with this, but I wouldn't feel right not mentioning that it was a comment of his in an earlier thread that set me on the road toward running things this way.

[Eero Tuovinen]

This is the third version of this reply I write; I just cannot decide on how to approach this. I think I'll be content with remarking that what you're describing seems to me dull as all hell, and puts absolutely all power over the story in the hands of the GM. It is clothed as impartial, but really just means that any way the players would have for affecting the story in a conflict situation is taken away, and only the GM is left with decisions (which abilities to apply, mainly).

What frequently happens in this kind of dysfunctional game is that the players start to avoid the rules. This is actually relatively common in D&D and other such systematically problematic games; the 1st level character does quite nicely as long as there are no combats, so presto, the player will do his utmost to use informal narrative technique to skip the combat. I expect that the players will do the same with this kind of Amber, or alternatively be content with the ultimate illusionistic approach.

I've always thought that the point of Amber was largely to win despite the numbers. Thus my application of it is more along the lines of "every detail counts".

The above might seem a little harsh, so let it be clear that if it's what seems fun to you, go right ahead. Just keep your eyes open for how the players react in the long run, and try to find players who like to mainly provide color.

[TonyLB]

I don't think it's particularly harsh, I think there's just a difference of perspective.

Yes, this system is meant to take away the power of the players to effect the outcome of combat.  That doesn't mean that it gives that power to the GM.  The GM doesn't have any ability to effect the outcome of combat either.  The outcome is predetermined.  Nobody effects it.

I think, however, you're overstating when you say that anybody is robbed of their ability to effect the story.  They are prevented from seeking one very specific story element (victory if they're lower ranked, loss if they're higher).  But the whole gamut of other possibilities is wide open.

Say they're going to lose.  They can die with their boots on, fighting to the last.  Or they can ask for parley, negotiate a surrender.  Or run like a rabbit.  Or convince their adversary to willingly switch to another attribute ("You fight with a sword?  Only girly-men fight with swords!  You wouldn't survive five seconds with me hand-to-hand!")  Or bluff their way out.  Or reveal that they have critical information their adversary can't afford to lose by killing them.  Or....

The only thing they can't do is win.  People naturally obsess about that one outcome.  When you take it irrevocably out of the equation you free their minds to pursue all manner of other options.

[Mark D. Eddy]

So why was someone first in Strength and first in Warfare losing to anyone else in the game example given in the parent thread?

To put it another way, if it's all about the numbers and not about the details, and the GM is powerless to stop things, then how or who determines which narration of the events is "true?" The winner? The loser? The GM? Some neutral bystander? The first person to say anything?

If the GM is the one who determines what factors are in play and which details are true, then yes, this style becomes Illusionism and probably Railroading. And all the power is in the hands of the GM. If the GM is powerless, and the System has the power, then why don't appeals to the System work?

Do the players have Karmic tokens that they can spend to affect the outcome?

I just don't get how this is supposed to work....

[TonyLB]

Well, "who resolves the rules" is actually a separate discussion from "how should the rules be resolved".  I think that Strict Karma tends to minimize those issues, because the questions that need to be resolved are "how quickly, how badly", rather than the more emotionally charged questions of "who wins, who loses".  It makes less difference, in a Social Contract sense, who arbitrates.

So, in the for-instance you raised, if a character first-ranked in Warfare gets into a sword-fight, they're going to win.  Every round of combat they will gain progressively more dominance and advantage in the situation.  That's not up for debate or arbitration.

How quickly that happens will depend upon the Warfare rank of their adversary.  If it is low then the superior fighter will be able to deliver a large amount of damage immediately, and things will get rapidly worse for the loser.  If their opponents rank is close to first then the process will be slower, an accumulation of minor victories over time.

Whoever is arbitrating the rules is responsible for judging how much advantage, and how quickly, a given difference in ranks should merit.  As I said, that role of arbitration can be assigned in many ways.  In my own game I handle it as part of being the GM.  But your suggestions of having the winner or the loser handle arbitration strike me as equally valid.  I think they'd make the game feel different, so it would be worth considering carefully what you're trying to achieve with the choice.

The idea of Karmic tokens is an interesting one, which I hadn't thought about.  How did you imagine that they would be used in the system?

[Eero Tuovinen]

So, in the for-instance you raised, if a character first-ranked in Warfare gets into a sword-fight, they're going to win.  Every round of combat they will gain progressively more dominance and advantage in the situation.  That's not up for debate or arbitration.

But that's exactly my point: who decides whether a given conflict is a swordfight? Who decides if the conflict can be cut short ("I jump out of the window to avoid him!")? What if the conflict is moved to another arena ("I'll cast a spell!")? Your rules do not actually solve anything at all, they just obfuscate the issue and give the GM a strong shield of impartiality to hide behind. "It's not me, it's the rules that say you are going to lose!" Just doesn't cut it with anyone with a whit of sense. It makes no difference at all whether the GM decides on
1) Is it a swordfight? How long it lasts?
or
2) Does the sword guy win? Does the spell guy win?
In both cases the concequence is win for one and loss for another.
The conventional wisdom is that the Situation has to affect these decisions for the story to make sense. I win because I have the Horde on my side, I lose because they have uncovered the magic sword. It's not because the GM decided that this time we use this ability instead of that one.

However, I'm not saying that what you propose is inherently impossible. There are games that indeed disregard the conditions (My Life with Master springs to mind). What these games have, however, is other ways the situation changes, and other foci of play. What you propose seems to make everything entirely predecided barring GM intervention. I have the strongest character, so as long as GM doesn't screw with my ambushes it's predecided that I succeed? This wouldn't be a problem in a game where the success in said endeavours weren't critical, but that's not so in Amber: the stories are created through conflict between the characters, and by predeciding conflict, you've predecided much of the content.

Consider: how interesting would the game be if the characters had only one ability score, Potency (randomly chosen), which decided every conflict? If this were the case and conflicts could never be escaped from and everybody could have a conflict with everyone else whenever they wished, then there would be no GM force in the game. If you can make the game work with that kind of system, then I believe that this is really the right system for you. Note that this is possible: if your game is about completely different things than intercharacter conflict, then it's quite conceivable that it'd work. The result would of course be the same as with the GM deciding every conflict; if the players wouldn't care about winning or losing, it might as well be the GM who orchestrated things. Then you'd need no rules system at all.

The idea of Karmic tokens is an interesting one, which I hadn't thought about.  How did you imagine that they would be used in the system?

There's plenty of systems that use metaresources that can be spent to affect the outcomes. Adventure! and Buffy are two mainstream ones that spring to mind. Even Ars Magica has willpower.

[TonyLB]

>Nod, nod<

Yes, exactly, Eero!  Very well stated.

The system works best for a game where "who wins, who loses" is not the main focus of the story, even when it's the main focus of the characters thought.  

I like running Amber that way, I think it's well suited for it.  After all, the first book of the fiction has Corwin throw himself heart and soul into a war he knows he's going to lose, and lose it, and he's still the way-cool protagonist.

But if, as you point out, you've got people who want to tell a story wherein their characters are avatars in the friendly competition between the players... well yeah, this is not the system you want.

[captain_bateson]

I've been trying to stay out of this thread, but obviously, I failed. I have a lot of issues with a strictly karmic combat resolution system, but I do actually have what I think is a valid question about the system that doesn't question the validity of the system, so I'm going to ask it.

In the quest to eliminate player input into the victor in a contest, I think that the intentions of the player and character are getting lost. That is to say, the system being proposed seems to presuppose that combat is always about victory of the other player, and thus, if the player is not looking for victory, he or she can do things outside the combat system to affect things, like talking, or running away, etc.

But, when combat is joined, the player no longer has any input even into what he or she hopes to accomplish with the combat other than total victory. What if the player just wants to wound the other person and flee (to take an example off the top of my head for no particluar reason...), or force another player into a trap, or simply keep another player from passing, or defending a child or something from another player... All these differing goals for a combat would change the character's tactics. But, in this system (as I understand it), since there is no room for tactics, the player must fight for an all-out victory or do something outside the combat system. That kind of sucks for Warfare/Strength characters, who cannot use their attributes to achieve anything but total victory, while power characters still have a whole plethora of non-combat and non-"total victory" options. It really limits what Warfare/Strength characters can do, story-wise, while leaving those options open for power characters.

I think this system hamstrings Warfare/Strength characters from being able to use their abilities to accomplish things other than total victory. If the only options are talk and "I fight," then the character's options in story terms are vastly limited, I think. I guess what I am suggesting is that maybe the system be modified to at least allow for simple tactics such as, "I don't let him cross this line," or, "I don't let him touch the girl," or, "I hit him in the face and run." Stuff like that. Or maybe it's not even about tactics (I'm thinking while typing here): Let the player state the general intentions of his or her character, as in, what does the character hope to accomplish in this combat? And then adjudicate by that. I think it takes something away from the process if character's and player's intentions aren't part of the mix.

Just my thoughts.

Also, to be nitpicky, Corwin went along with Bleys' attack because he was afraid that Bleys might win and be harder to unseat than Eric, which means he didn't throw himself into a war he knows he's going to lose. If he'd thought Bleys had no chance of winning, he would have walked away. It's because he feared Bleys might win that he went along.

[Mark D. Eddy]

When I said Karmic Tokens I was thinking about Nobilis, another diceless RPG, which has a system (called miracle points) that allows a player to temporarily increase their character's effectiveness in a given area. These tokens are a limited resource, so deciding when to use them to affect an outcome is a good source of tension. In Amber, a Karmic token could be used to bump up the effective rank of the character temporarily.

And this is another place where communication seems to be breaking down. In my view, how something happens in an RPG is as important as what happens. In fact, I would argue that for me how quickly/how badly is a more emotionally charged issue than who wins/who loses. Especially in Amber Diceless where the original mechanic for who wins is (as I understand it) based on how cool your description of what you're doing is.

So running a game in the Amber setting using your mechanic is fine, but it's really not the same as running a game using the ADRPG rules. In fact, it's diametrically opposed in mechanic and in intent from where I sit.

(edit: cross post)

[captain_bateson]

Mark:

I agree wholeheartedly.

[Jonathan Walton]

I think everybody in this thread is missing what Tony's saying and what he's trying to accomplish with such a system.  Personally, I think it sounds like a wonderful way of playing.  Boring, schmoring.  I'd love to play a game where all the outcomes were fixed and you could focus on HOW you win or lose in a given situation.  I don't just think this is a YMMV thing either (though of course it is to one degree or another), I think people are misunderstanding what this would be like in actual play.

Bateson, your "total victory" objection I don't think applies in such a case.  If I'm 1st in Warfare, there's no reason that I have to say, "I'm going to kill him."  I can say, "I'm going to wound him and make him look ridiculously bad in this swordfight, so he embarasses himself," and then proceed to do just that.  Being 1st just means you automatically succeed at everything, where Warfare is concerned.

I think the only concern I have, Tony, is how you resolve situations where different players are bringing different attributes to play.  Imagine the former situation, where the opponent was 1st in Social (or whatever the attribute was) and decided to ridicule his opponent during the swordfight, to make his enemy come out looking worse, even though he himself was the one losing the fight.  Now you have a 1st vs. a 1st, both trying to achieve the same goal in different ways.  Is it a draw?  That seems rather uninteresting.  Would you just play it out and see who ends up looking the best or least foolish?  That seems to supercede the entire need for a resolution system, Karmic or otherwise.

[captain_bateson]

I can say, "I'm going to wound him and make him look ridiculously bad in this swordfight, so he embarasses himself," and then proceed to do just that.

Tony's idea doesn't work that way either. Don't ask me how it does work. I don't know. But it doesn't work like that. If it did, I would still be in Tony's game.

[John Kim]

This seems related to a technique advocated by Theatrix, which was also published in an RPG magazine article by the authors -- which they called "Tell me why you fail".  i.e. The outcome is explicitly determined at the start, but the GM gives the player control over how and why.  I did this at the start of the Conan RPG event http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11633">Brawny Thews, for example.  

However, I think this really needs to be an open process.  If the intent is for the players not to concentrate so much on winning or losing, then the players need to be partners in the process.  Ideally, a player needs to know going into an encounter whether he will win or lose.  For comparison, in Brawny Thews, the first thing I said was to explain that the PCs would eventually be overcome and captured.  They knew that before I described anything about the approaching army.  None of the players had any problem with this.  

As far as the mechanics of Amber, the problem is that one-on-one swordfights or wrestling matches are the only clear case -- but there are a lot of other possibilities.  You really need the karmic system to have clear answers for what happens in the case of Logrus, shape-shift, sorcery, items, and so forth.  If the results are an intuitive process in your head, then it just makes the contest into wheedling you as GM.

[TonyLB]

John Kim:  On cooperation:  Yeah.  I've been floating the idea of telling the players the stats of their enemies when battle commences, but some of them are concerned (understandably) that it takes away some of their ability to immerse in the uncertainty of the character.  Not sure how to handle that.

Jonathon:  I had this horrible mental hangup responding to this, because I kept thinking "Can't they both succeed, and both end up looking like idiots?"  Which is (I think) amusing, but doesn't really answer your question.

Your concern about how to adjudicate when people are trying to use different attributes is a very valid one.  It's one I've been wrestling with, still being somewhat of a fledgling in this particular way of resolving conflict.

I see two clear paths, neither of which is wholly satisfactory.  One is what you outlined, making it a subjective decision and doing the best you can.  Probably serviceable in a situation where the rest of the gaming relationship is good, but certainly not a mechanic that helps run the game.

The second way is to define the attributes so narrowly that they have no overlap.  In those terms, having first in warfare doesn't give you the ability to declare that you embarass your enemy.  It gives you the ability to fancifully cut his clothes to ribbons, which one might reasonably assume (but could not compel) would indirectly have that effect.  But, at the least, there is no direct conflict between Warfare and Social then:  The warfare guy cuts the others clothes to ribbons, the social one delivers a stinging witticism.  Both resolved by the same ruleset, independently... leaving the question of who actually looked better to, you guessed it, subjective judgment.  Arrgh.

Because if you narrow the attributes that much then you've left all this huge gaping territory unfilled between them, and everything that happens in there will (once again) be happening outside of the resolution system.  Again, it might work out if your group is good but it's not elegant and helpful.

So... yeah.  It's a problem.  Anybody got a fiendishly simple and brilliant idea for fixing it?  I'll bake a batch of brownies and eat them in your honor if you do!

[Mark Johnson]

So... yeah.  It's a problem.  Anybody got a fiendishly simple and brilliant idea for fixing it?  I'll bake a batch of brownies and eat them in your honor if you do!

Fortune.