the balance of power - brainstorming

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

I'd like to suggest that The Mountain Witch, Trollbabe, and Primetime Adventures all share a feature which renders the "easy/hard" construction of skill tests in traditional role-playing obsolete. This feature has been an informal part of role-playing for a long time, and I've always used it more-or-less as a litmus for whether I wanted to play with a given group or not.

It can be found as a necessary but unstated assumption in The Pool. If you don't use it in (say) Over the Edge, the game is unplayable. It's an explicit feature in Dust Devils, Universalis, Dogs in the Vineyard, and Hero Wars, and frankly muddled by changes in the latter to HeroQuest.

Which is ... conflicts are settled by rolls. It doesn't matter how much "damage" you take or how "hard" it was, if a character loses, the conflict is resolved against the character's interests.

Further, without the presence of such a conflict-of-interest, there is no roll. At all. You could suggest that your character jumps over a mountain, and the group all looks at you like, "shut up." You could suggest your character fixes the nuclear reactor, and if it's not a conflict in the sense I'm talking about, then he just does 'cause he's a nuclear-fixer guy. Doesn't matter if it's "hard" to do.

At first this might look all loosey-goosey and consensual-story, but it's not. It's actually strictly vicious in practice - always roll when it matters, and eat the roll (relative to other system issues like Currency mods and so forth) once it's made. It's exactly the opposite of the duplicitious Golden Rule of the Storyteller system.

So ... basically, the GM in The Mountain Witch cannot keep throwing oni devils at the player-characters in order to keep them from entering the Witch's castle gate. Because if they win the roll, then that conflict is solved. All narration must abide by the standard that they do, indeed, enter the gate. Hell, the person who narrates might even state that 100 more oni show up and get slaughtered, just as a piece of the narration (these games vary in terms of how much you can add along the way; TMW is quite generous, whereas Trollbabe isn't).

Matt, I think this concept accounts well for your questions. Do I need to parse it out a bit more? I'm thinking maybe that real Actual Play examples are called for.

Best,
Ron

[Larry L.]

Ron, could you elaborate on how this varies in Hero Wars vs. Hero Quest? I'm familiar with both texts but don't know what you're referring to. It would probably serve to clarify your larger point. (To me, at least.)

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Larry,

Difficulty target numbers in Hero Wars struck me as essentially conflict-based in terms of impact on the cultural and magical problems of Glorantha. The more significant the problem, the more Ws are involved. Within each plateau, frankly, the difference between (say) 5 and 15 really isn't a representational issue, more of a "fully in this plateau" or "barely there" indicator.

HeroQuest is marred throughout with a nearly fetish-like fascination with representational scale ("how many masteries in 'large' does an elephant have") and with skill-oriented difficulty. I've written before how infuriating I find the very first system example, when Mr. Puma leaps into a tree to avoid being seen by a merchant ... and the text gets all wrapped up in what the tree rolls based on how big and tall it is.

That is crap. It's crap for all the reasons Matt is discussing in this thread. The real conflict present is between Mr. Puma and the merchant, and should be rolled in that fashion. At most the tree should be an augmenter for one or the other. I blame the resurgence of RuneQuest grognard influence in the development of HeroQuest, which I think did serious damage to the clarity of the text and the game itself.

Best,
Ron

[timfire]

Yes! Although I still want to know: can you as GM in TMW choose how hard to make a conflict? Are there such things as "Easy/medium/hard" conflicts? Or is it more like Trollbabe? If you do have that ability, how much control over the game can it give you?

What Ron said, but also this -- while there are things the GM can do to modulate the... let's call it the "toughness" of a Conflict, because of the profound impact of Aiding (aka Trust) on resolution, the true "difficulty" is largely decided by the players. 3 or 4 characters working together with Trust will literally whomp anything the GM can throw at them. But if the characters don't spend Trust to Aid one another, then they end up having a hell of time defeating enemies.

This goes back to the idea that the players' real mechanism for affecting Conflicts, Trust, isn't hindered (much) by the damage-related penalty. The damage-related penalty only hurts characters when they are alone.

Now, what can happen is the GM can continue pushing conflicts even after the players all run out of Trust, at which time he has the advantage. But unless he has a good reason for doing that(*), it becomes very hard to hide the fact that he's just being a jerk.


(*) There are good reasons for doing that, but that topic isn't really relevant to this discussion.

[chadu]

Which gives me a tiny nubbin of an idea for a "damage system," actually. If you lose a conflict, then you can choose (1) reduce a trait you previously created for your character, which means your character will be less effective - or - (2) let the winner assign your character a trait, which will increase your character's effectiveness but not necessarily in ways you're going to like. (This latter is basically Tony Lower-Basch's Misery Bubblegum design).

The #1 you mention is essentially the damage system for all the PDQ-based games found here:
Dead Inside
Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot: the RPG
Truth & Justice (just released)

[Sydney Freedberg]

Cool. I gotta check those out, now. But the thing I was trying to get at was the idea of giving players a choice: take "damage" as reduced effectiveness -- the tradition HP/wound penalty/etc. model -- or as reduced control -- allowing someone else to partially define your character. ("I win, now you care about X!")

[chadu]

Cool. I gotta check those out, now. But the thing I was trying to get at was the idea of giving players a choice: take "damage" as reduced effectiveness -- the tradition HP/wound penalty/etc. model -- or as reduced control -- allowing someone else to partially define your character. ("I win, now you care about X!")

Putting those together in a single damage system isn't a bad idea. Not at all.

In T&J, I have them as two separate systems: damage -- as noted above -- and as one of the ways characters get Hero Points ( Revoltin' Developments.)

CU

[Matt Wilson]

Matt, I think this concept accounts well for your questions. Do I need to parse it out a bit more? I'm thinking maybe that real Actual Play examples are called for.

Yeah, I get it. I forgot about the 'what's done is done' approach.

But here's what's still missing: in HeroQuest or Hero Wars or hell a ton of games out there, what keeps you from making the roll in the first place exceedingly hard? Why not make every roll exceedingly hard? I think 'use common sense' or 'follow these guidelines' is unsatisfactory.

PTA's budget is definitely a big reaction on my part to what I'm talking about there, a concept prevalent in RPGs that I think is unequivocably stupid: GM has limitless power and is advised not to use it. "You can have the opposition be a difficulty of one million, because you're the GM, but don't do that because it would be unfun."

It's crap. It needs to go away forever.

The players have to have a resource at their disposal that, as Vincent says, makes it so that the GM doesn't have to pull punches. Make the difficulty a million, and give the players the opportunity to play a veto card, or allow the GM to make it a 10^6 difficulty only once per game session. That's what I'm after.

TMW has the nice trump card of Trust. Cool.
In Trollbabe, there is no way, really, for the GM to get carried away with conflict difficulty. All you can do is add one more required roll, and that's really drowned out by how easy it is to gain more rerolls.
In Dogs, adversity is created randomly via the en-masse NPC creation, and there's tons of loopholes in conflicts that allow players an out.
PTA has budget, and I'm kind of stuck with variants of budget right now in terms of game design, and maybe that's okay, but I'm wondering how else we can do what all these games are doing.

[Bill Cook]

But here's what's still missing: in HeroQuest or Hero Wars or hell a ton of games out there, what keeps you from making the roll in the first place exceedingly hard? Why not make every roll exceedingly hard?

Sounds like player assent. I'm sure you're familiar with Vincent's insight to "negotiate Stakes toward a viable Give." To include in a rules manual, it'd be an explicit definition of a kind of SC; but that should do it, without any need for further mechanical refinement.

Of coure, if you wanted to, you could implement the idea with coins and a system of exchange, for example. That could make it more tangible and economic.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Matt,

I agree with you, and I think it comes down to a much larger question of where "scenes" come from and where "conflict" comes from - in terms of real people talking. The issue of "difficulty" (making the roll hard) is an artifact of how these things are constructed in traditional role-playing, and once you alter the basic ("meta," whatever) system, this issue tends to dry up and blow away.

If I do say so myself, I think Trollbabe solves the problem by specifying who says scenes start and stop, and who says conflicts begin. For those of you who know the game, you know that both of these are (a) formalized and (b) rather nuanced in practice, within the formalization.

There are certainly other solutions, such as the turn-order approach taken by Universalis, Capes, and PTA. These work as well or better, despite intense gamer-culture resistance to the idea of "taking turns."

The one really painful feature of Sorcerer's current system is that whole "roll against however many dice the GM feels like" part, when an opposing character is not specified. Vincent solved this neatly in Dogs by calling this roll "the demons" and assigning it a fixed amount - a sneaky and effective feature which eludes most users' understanding, if the Actual Play posts are anything to go by (they keep thinking he's talking about, you know, demons). In practice, when playing Sorcerer, I usually use 1-3 dice, which isn't much, for such rolls, essentially mimicking Vincent's solution informally. Also, such rolls are very rare, because they must be real conflicts but other characters are not involved.

I think this'll be a big discussion topic at GenCon this year. I even have a diagram which might help, but it works best in real-people conversation.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

The players have to have a resource at their disposal that, as Vincent says, makes it so that the GM doesn't have to pull punches. Make the difficulty a million, and give the players the opportunity to play a veto card, or allow the GM to make it a 10^6 difficulty only once per game session. That's what I'm after.

Remove the GM and let the IS determine the opposition autonomously.  Like playing solitaire.

All of these proposals, it seems to me, disempower the GM in favour of a rules-constrained approach to constructing opposition.  So, why not simply automate the whole process and use the GM purely as an animator-come-administrator of what amounts to system-generated opposition.

[Matt Wilson]

Ron:

Cool. Yeah, I'm looking forward to beer + that topic.

Gareth:

So, why not simply automate the whole process and use the GM purely as an animator-come-administrator of what amounts to system-generated opposition.

Yeah, I think if you disempower the GM completely in terms of written rules, that's what he or she becomes. Universalis is kind of like that when one person kind of takes an alpha position to keep play moving. And maybe more games will go that way. I have something slightly different in mind, but I'd have to detail the specific game more in order to explain it.

[Sean]

Gareth - there is a big 'what's the GM for' issue that comes up here.

But I don't agree with you that good GM constraints on providing conflict/adversity/opposition render the GM role meaningless. On the contrary, I find these rules really, really liberating as GM, at least taking Dogs as my example. Because when you don't have these rules, when you leave it to 'judgment', the GM is effectively playing against himself, and has to ask all these questions about what's 'fair' and 'realistic' (get thee behind me, Satan!) in order to give the players a fun time. It's a big hassle. Even when you do a good job, maybe your monster rolls a crit in the final encounter, and then you're like 'gosh, should I have used an Ogre? Was I being a dick or was that fair?'

If the system does that for you you can ask the question about whether the system provides a good level of adversity or not and how instead, letting yourself enjoy playing the game in play.

[Larry L.]

Brainstorming, eh? Here are some half-baked ideas I've come up with while reading this thread:

Difficulty cards. The GM draws a hand of cards with "difficulty" numbers each session. (e.g. 1,1,2,1,2,1,1,5,3,1) He can play any of these he chooses when the players face a conflict. Similar to PTA's budget, but a different tactile approach.

GM-less auto-cards. As above, except cards are drawn from a face-down deck.

GM-less Plot path. There is a FIXED sequence of "difficulties," probably corresponding to rising interest-climax-resolution.

Chrono path. As plot path, but defined by real-time moments during the game session. (e.g. everything becomes "climax" difficulty forty minutes before the end of the session)


Where I use "difficulty," I'm developing a vague awareness of the concept Ron is describing, but do not yet grok. I may just need to play more of the games referenced.

[Adam Dray]

In Verge, players set the difficulty themselves, based entirely on the amount of risk they're willing to take on. The player rolls his dice, and the GM rolls the risk dice the players gave him.

Then if the player wins the conflict, the player rolls his dice again and the GM rolls his dice again, and the difference is the player's reward -- except that it's reversed. That is, the GM's dice margin of success (MOS) minus the player's MOS is the reward.

The more risk the player takes ("gives" is more accurate), the more rewards the player gets. The GM never sets the risk level for any conflict.