So i started this project intending to enter it as a 24 Hour RPG.

Basically i'm trying to capture the feel of Caper fiction. Examples include: The Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven, The Great Escape, The Jackal, and Mission: Impossible. Pretty much anything that has a Planning and Execution phase (regardless of how much or little attention a given phase gets). I think i've got a solid system that should be fun to play and easy to learn.

In order to follow, as closely as possible, the fiction which inspired the game i have a mechanic that attempts to foster a sense of constantly rising Tension. In order to do this i have a Tension value that is tracked for the game as a whole (like Fear in MLwM). I'm quite pleased with the way the numbers interact with the system's resolution mechanics. Unfortunately there is a problem:

I don't know what makes Tension increase. Essentially, i've got a game that has a great slot for a Premise to be addressed, but i can't seem to figure out what Premise would fit into this genre. I have absolutely no idea. Needless to say the project is unfinished, but i think that if i had a Premise i could get a first draft up and running in a day or two...

What i'm asking for is: Suggestions. What Premise do you think this style of game would be well suited to addressing?

Thomas

One thing that these sort of films often seem to rely on for increasing tension is the secrets in the different characters' pasts. Perhaps flashback scenes that reveal elements that endanger the mission could crank up tension?

The other thing to use would probably be the unexpected. Maybe flash-forwards could be used after a part of the plan is nailed down to show (for instance) the guards changing their patrol pattern or something like that.

And it sounds like a great idea for a game, by the way.

Oooh, ooh, ooh. I love Caper movies. I'll try to help!

How about "Cleverness: The cause of and solution to all of life's problems."

Good points on time shifts ratcheting up tension, but that's not really what i'm trying to get at here. Those are great ways to indicate an increase in Tension, but what i'm looking for is actually a reason to increase the Tension.

Example: In My Life with Master you have a Love stat. Love rises as you exhibit your humanity. You also have a Self Loathing stat which increases as you exhibit your inhumanity. So the Premise can be stated as: Are you truly a monster or can you overcome your inhuman qualities?

For Caper i need to define that moral question. Tension should go up whenever that question is addressed (whether a definative answer is provided or not).

Thomas

EDITED NOTE: Crossposted with Tony.

Are you sure that it's necessarily a moral premise? Seems caper films are less about morality than mastery -- about keeping your cool (self-control) and keeping on top of the situation (control of others). Tension would therefore rise whenever it becomes harder to keeps under control (either internal or external), or perhaps whenever something actually goes out of control on either front.

E.g. an internal loss of control could be the gang's alcoholic driver having a few drinks too many before the heist; an external loss of control could be the guards changing the patrol route as you mentioned.

Ocean's 11 SPOILER Follows!

Or a complex example: in Ocean's 11 (the new version -- haven't seen the original), the Matt Damon character and the Two Bickering Brothers [names forgotten] are told "wait in the van" (attempt at control by Clooney's character, Ocean, the boss). But the Brothers Bicker endlessly (minor failure of self-control) which causes Matt Damon's character to lose patience and get out of the van (major failure of self-control), which ends up the guards chasing him (loss of control of situation) and the Asian acrobat guy [yes, I suck at remembering names] getting his hand crunched (all told, a significant but not catastrophic defeat).

EDIT for afterthought: Come to think of it (as I was folding baby laundry), Ocean's 11 is all about these themes of control: Think how much self-control Ocean (Clooney) has to exercise in his final scam-within-a-scam to control others, including ultimately the archvillain Benedict (Andy Garcia, right?), in a situation where he appears to have totally lost control.

Sydney, I think you have just explained what I was getting at.

Control is certainly a major theme of caper films, and I think it comes out in the two ways you described.

A good reason to increase tension, riffing off of the last suggestion, would be to tie the tension to the payoff. If the tension never rises, the payoff is never big. Give a scale in the rules system that runs from "you end up worse off than you started" and goes all the way up to "You are better off than you expected" and require the players to generate some number X of internal points of tension to get there.

To keep things unpredictable have a random number of external points of tension.

If the potential payoff goes up as points of tension are resolved instead of as they are added, then you can begin a bit to duplicate the flip from "hell in a handbasket" to "coming up roses" that is characteristic of caper fiction - things are never looking worse than right before the resolution, when the tension is cranked to the roof - but then those points of tension get resolved or worked around or revealed as part of a greater plan (cf: Ocean's 11) and suddenly the whole picture changes.

James

The key to Caper films is that they always involve a Plan with a whole host of tiny little Steps that have to be accomplished in order and on time to deliver the Payoff.

The tension in Caper stories comes either (a) when a necessary Step of the Plan is botched, thus cranking up the difficulty of subsequent Steps, or (b) when a Surprise is injected into the mix -- somebody does something the Caperers don't expect, or a key piece of information turns out to be wrong or incomplete.

I would say that Tension increases in one of two ways:

1) At the players' request, the GM has to introduce an Unexpected Complication - requiring the players to think on their feet. (Potentially, one player can introduce them against another?) This cranks up the Tension, but increases the Payoff -- it's the equivalent of raising the stakes in a poker game.

2) If a PC botches any of the Steps, the Tension should go up in direct proportion to how badly he/she botched.

As for the Premise: well, most Capers get undertaken not just for the money (there are usually easier/simpler ways to make money, even in the amounts most Capers go for), but to make some kind of point -- they're about humiliating the victim, or proving the Caperer's cleverness, or accomplishing a Mission from God (hey, The Blues Brothers is its own kind of caper film).

So how about: Playing the game well is more important than winning it. Or: A victory won without style is no victory at all. The whole point of the game is not just to pull off the Caper but to pull it off as dashingly and skilfully as possible -- it's better to fail at a complex plan than succeed with a simple, brute-force plan any moron could have thought up.

Hello,

Thomas, you must run and not walk to run a search here at the Forge for all discussion of Criminal Element, the only role-playing game design I've seen that really nails the caper film.

As far as GNS goes, it mainly supports High Concept Sim, and does so very very well through every single feature of its design. Although it's not in final form yet to my knowledge, it could be a standout game.

Best,
Ron

Blankshield wrote: A good reason to increase tension, riffing off of the last suggestion, would be to tie the tension to the payoff. If the tension never rises, the payoff is never big. Give a scale in the rules system that runs from "you end up worse off than you started" and goes all the way up to "You are better off than you expected" and require the players to generate some number X of internal points of tension to get there.

In Age of Paranoia we addressed this style of events through our Mission Play. While there are som,e bugs (see further down) I think so far its working quite well.

Jeremiah

Sydney Freedberg wrote: Are you sure that it's necessarily a moral premise? Seems caper films are less about morality than mastery -- about keeping your cool (self-control) and keeping on top of the situation (control of others). Tension would therefore rise whenever it becomes harder to keeps under control (either internal or external), or perhaps whenever something actually goes out of control on either front.

The other thing I'll point out (though it's been highlighted by some of the Ocean's 11 references) is that characters do not (and should not) immediately know when things are spiralling out of control.

Much of the really fun stuff (particularly early in a story) happens during the gap between the audience realizing that the plan's gone wrong and the characters realizing it.

That's a really good point. The quesion arises: Is there a way to allow the players as audience to know that things are spiraling out of control while still keeping the players as characters in the dark?

I don't know if that is even possible, and i do not really see a good way to approximate it either.

Thomas

I think you should have your tension statistic increase incrementally throughout the game. If you think about all those movies you mentioned each one of them had to accomplish their goal within a time-frame. Just have your tension stat go up either in real-time, game-time, or as the characters reach specific points within the story. Make sure you give GMs direction on when to add their tension breaks - e.g. every fifteen minutes, increase tension +1, or when the characters discover they've been duped increase +5. Now that I think about it, you could use a combination of all three...

Since I'm rambling, why not require the characters to track and spend tension points throughout the session? Maybe they have to release a certain amount of built up tension througout the game (insert dirty joke here) and it has a negative effect on their character.

Just spitballing. As you can see, I like your idea :)

LordSmerf wrote: That's a really good point. The quesion arises: Is there a way to allow the players as audience to know that things are spiraling out of control while still keeping the players as characters in the dark?

Mike,

It is not a case of "trusting" the players. This is something i would be doing for the benefit of the players. The rising tension is made more interesting when the audience is aware of the cause and the characters are not. Regardless of whether the players utilize the knowledge of the cause of tension increases in the service of their character or not, they can not not know. It may not matter, but i think it would be nice to implement some sort of seperation of knowledge if that is at all possible.

Thomas

I'm not sure that you can get the separation you want - I certainly can't think of any way to do it.

If complications are to raise the tension, and the audience (i.e. you and the players) see them, then the players have to see them too.

The characters, of course, don't know. However, I can't think of a mechanical way to make the 'player as audience' know something while the 'player as actor' doesn't.

I think that the system of 'well, you (audience) know that this bad thing happened, but if he/she (character) acts on this knowledge then it will be worse' would do the trick.

This means that the players have an incentive to keep the characters going, even though the plan may already be shot. It also means that the player has the option of fixing that specific problem but only by increasing tension again and revealing something about their character that demonstrates how they know (such as 'I'm an undercover cop', from one relevant source).

Actual separation of knowledge via any method I can think of (e.g. writing down complications to be revealed later) just means that the audience misses out.

I should also add that I think one of the coolest things about the game would be the moments when the players as audience have some immense complication revealed to them and are sitting around saying, "Oh, crap, when the characters find this out, they'll be so screwed!"

I guess that another way you could go would be to have the game more adversarial, in a GM vs players way, and the GM could have the job of (as the players plan things) thinking of things that will go wrong and noting them down. Then the final section of the game would involve the GM revealing all the complications as the plan is implemented - possibly using flashback scenes and the like. However, this would make the rising tension much less compelling for the players. You might be able to get around that by making the rises in tension public - so their planning would be being periodically interrupted by "I'm adding more tension now" as the GM determines a complication. Triggering these might be difficult, though - perhaps a tension would be gained every time a section of the plan is hammered out? and for every piece of luck the need? and each piece of fancy gear? Hmm... maybe that could work...

I believe you are right. It does not seem possible to give knowledge to players as audience and withhold that same knowledge from players as actors. Hopefully someone will prove me wrong, since i think that would be a really cool thing to do. For now though i will put it aside.

Moving on. I currently have a couple of ideas that i want to playtest before making a decision. I really like the idea of Tension being an indication of control over the situation so i believe that what will trigger a rise in Tension is that control slipping away.

Currently i have two methods i am considering:

1. Rolling a "failure" during the Planning phase does not mean that you failed in your task (i say that Planning always works). Instead it results in a rise in Tension indicating that you have done something to tip off the Mark.

2. Real-time Tension increases. Perhaps every 10 or 15 or 20 or however many minutes Tension goes up. I like this at the basic level for two reasons: First, i just like metagame mechanics, especially when they are tied exclusively to the real-world while still adding to the flavor of the game. Second, this puts a practical time limit on the game, it really becomes impractical for a session to take more than 3 (or some other number determined by Tension rate) hours. This means that you can sit down and play through a session knowing about how long it will take you.

Of course i do not really have any idea what a real-time mechanic like option 2 would do because i have never worked with one before. Therefore: playtesting!

If anyone else has a suggestion for mechanically triggering rising Tension feel free to add...

Thomas

Regarding your real-time mechanic, I'd suggest using an alarm clock or similar to regulate this tension increase. Every x minutes, the alarm goes off and tension goes up.

I played a convention Call of Cthulhu game where the GM used this technique, and it was very effective for raising tension. He didn't even tell us what it was (although it later became obvious that it reflected the air leaking out of the undersea base we were in).

In your case, I guess this would just be the countdown for when the job had to be done...

MikeSands wrote: Regarding your real-time mechanic, I'd suggest using an alarm clock or similar to regulate this tension increase. Every x minutes, the alarm goes off and tension goes up.

[snip]

In your case, I guess this would just be the countdown for when the job had to be done...

What if cool were a pool of points you could use to cover failures and every time the aformentioned clock went off you would loose a point of your presious cool. the other mechanic that would go with this is something the character can do that would raise their cool. something that is not something they want to be doing in the vault durring a burglery.

I gotta say, the alarm clock idea is very cool. That alone would make Caper distinctive ("Dude, what was that game with the alarm clock? We gotta do that one again!"). Ideally it'd be some kind of timer that ticks audibly throughout the whole session.

I agree that "Planning always works" is the way to go, so failures in planning-stage rolls could add Complications that pop up in the execution phase, forcing the improvization that characters the second half of caper movies. (That way you could even make the rolls in the open -- the players know they've failed a roll, and the characters have the nagging sense they're missing something, but the GM doesn't reveal the Complication s/he's come up with until the execution phase).

Each time the timer goes off, then, either (a) the difficulty of all planning rolls could go up by 1 -- representing, say, the target getting suspicious, or security being tightened, or just your original information on this big fat easy target becoming out of date; or (b) a new Complication could be introduced automatically.

Presumably there needs to be a countervailing mechanic to tempt players to take their time -- i.e. the more time they spend in Planning, and the more successful Planning rolls they make, the more of some good thing they have in the Execution phase. But what? Dunno.

Currently the two big advantages of Planning are Knowledge and Equipment.

Essentially the focus of the Planning phase is discovering what Complications are in place, and acquiring equipment that helps you overcome those Complications.

I know that i also want to implement a Time Table. I just do not yet know how detailed i want it to be...

Thomas

Hi All. This is my first post; hope it's on the right track.

You mention acquiring equipment and knowledge as being part of the game; how about using a similar scene-based method to MLwM? But each scene is the acquisiton of a person, a skill, a piece of equipment, a situation, or a piece of knowledge necessary to the plan.

Taking O's 11 as an example; Danny already pretty much has his strategy; his job is to put together a trained, equipped team and then execute the plan*. So the first part of the film is a set of scenes where he recruits people, where he gets equipment, where he sets things up. In your game, why not have similar scenes? This is where the MLwM comparison comes in; players ask for scenes to achieve the plan. "I want to find someone with a Mark III diving suit with UV goggles" or "I need a new helicopter engine" or "I need a safeman". Make the usefulness of the 'element' the same as the risk of the scene; if the players succeed, they get the useful item. If they fail, they lose it and gain a complication.

I'm not sure how coherent all this sounds. Here's a rundown of a way of doing things.

1. The objective is set; rip off three casino's, get 6,000 dollars by monday morning, whatever. The GM sets a Difficulty

eg; Rip off $100,000,000 from the world's threemost secure casino's; Difficulty 10.

2. The players create characters who have a reason to perform the caper.

3. The GM creates complications by splitting the Difficulty into complications of different ratings;

3pt; All security codes are known only by the casino owner, and
2pt; Danny's ex-wife is now the casino owner's girlfriend.
2pt; The safe has motion sensors on all the floors, and completely locks down.
1pt; elevators are guarded by six armed security guards.
1pt; The safe is underground.
1pt; The police are called whenever any alarm in the building goes off.

4. The players suggest scenes to prepare for the complications. They can only ask for a number of setup scenes equal to the difficulty of the caper; eg 10 setup scenes total. No setup scene can get rid of a complication at this point; just prepare for it in the final stage.

eg; players create a mock-up of the safe room, learn to blow the bloody doors off, buy an electric piano from Ray Charles, etc.

5. The execution; The plan goes into action. The players actually carry out the actions they've prepared for. So it's now that safe-men actually crack the real safe, when the power goes down, when the computer virus brings down all the computers, when the gang rush into the bank dressed as mexican bandits, whatever. The complications the GM has set are torn down by the preparations of the players. But this not should be entirely predicable, and failures lead to tension.

It's in the execution phase that I think tension is really important, more so than in the preparation phase.

I know this doesn't address everything, but I hope it's some useful ideas that you can use.

Steve

--
* This is pretty much the same in The Blues Brothers and The Italian Job, iirc

Steve,

Welcome, and thanks a lot for the input.

You made an excellent point about the use of scenes... I had not even though of doing things that way. At the moment i am rather fixated on using a physical clock to time the caper down, so i am not sure that a scene structure would fit in well.

Of course there is a chance (maybe even a good one) that a physical clock just will not work for the "feel" i want. If that ends up happening there is definately some potential in stealing the scene system from MLwM...

Thomas

Glad you liked it. Here's some more ideas that are floating around in my head.

The clock-based part sounds great for a short period of time - probably the end-game. Running a five-hour game with a ramp-up every fifteen minutes sounds particularly hardcore (especially if the clock continues through toilet breaks, etc)

To blend together a couple of ideas from earlier, then - split the game into two sections; preparation and execution. Preparation is about getting prepared but also earning Cool points. In execution, the cool points get used as 'ablative armour',things that can keep the plan on track. You use the clock in the execution phase to keep things fast and tense. Given that realtime somewhat equals gametime, the players do better if they talk qucikly, don't babble, etc. Which I think works nicely.

I guess I'm just trying to deconstruct Ocean's 11 again, trying to find out what the core of the film is.

The one thing I'm concerned about, slightly, is that capers have one or two masterminds; maybe one planner and one charmer. Danny Ocean and Brad Pitt's character, The blues brothers, Charlie Croker and Mr Bridger; is this a necessary part of the caper movie, or is, say, a player group of six acceptable? (The counter-example that springs to mind is Robin Hood ;)

Just in case, plot summaries can be found on IMDB;

Ocean's 11; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240772/plotsummary
Italian Job; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064505/plotsummary
Blue's Brothers; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080455/plotsummary
Thomas crown affair; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155267/plotsummary

By the way, are you looking to do just 'fun capers' or more serious heist movies like The Score, Heat, etc? Will you want to be able to run the game both ways?

SteveCooper wrote: By the way, are you looking to do just 'fun capers' or more serious heist movies like The Score, Heat, etc? Will you want to be able to run the game both ways?

Hum, my first post in "The Forge".

I certainly see a problem with the distinction between the protagonists of a caper movie and the audience. The players are both and therefore either know things or they don't. But the typical caper movie relies very much on the audience knowing things the protagonists don't and vice versa.

For example, you often have scenes where the protagonists carry out a part of the plan that simply works. These scenes are great because the audience doesn't know the plan before it is executed. They see the cool and very skilled protagonists coming up with astonishing actions. When I watch these kind of scenes, I always try to figure out what the plan might be, but fail to realize it until just a second before it is done.

The only way I could think of to reproduce this effect in roleplaying would be to let a single player narrate such a scene, seizing control of all characters. The others could then throw in cool remarks, but not more.

Another point: Caper movies rarely show the original research and planning part. Sometimes the plan is discussed, but those scenes are more a means of foreshadowing what might go wrong, and of portraying the characters. Rarely is it expected that the audience themselves ponder the arising problems and sweat with the protagonists over a solution. Most of the time the eventual plans are also very elaborate, much more so than I would trust myself to pull out of the sleeve. The author may well have brooded for months until he came up with the one brilliant idea that saves the day.

Sorry, I'm not trying to discourage you, I'm just wondering how this is going to work. Will not the "planning phase" involve a lot of pondering that slows the game down, whereas a caper movie largely depends on pace to keep the tension up? Or, if you use a time limit to prevent the pondering, isn't there the danger that no elaborate plan will come out?

Well, you could have the players make up the obstacles as they make up the plan. That would probably make for a good show, but it would submit the tension to the execution phase alone.

Good point Frank... I think that i will have to run an initial play test to see if it is fun Planning on the clock...

Thomas