The Forge Reference Project

Topic: Above and Beyond
Started by: apparition13
Started on: 5/22/2005
Board: Indie Game Design

Hi there, I'm apparition13 and I haven't played in 15+ years. I've been collecting RPGs, but no actual play. Recently I started visiting here and RPG.net and I find myself thinking maybe I should start up again. I've got half a dozen settings I've been fiddling with, but I found myself, upon reading into Midnight, interested with the potential of that setting and the advantages of doing something in a commercially available setting. This has lead me to a bit of a quandary, so I hope you’ll bear with me while I put it all into context. I may go on a bit, but germaneness is in the offing.

For those of you who may not be familiar, Midnight is advertised as a setting analogous to Middle Earth had Sauron won. It posits a world wherein Good has lost the Last Battle and if engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. What sets it apart from other “after the disaster” (I’ve got one of these settings myself) settings is that the opportunity to strike back remains, even though hope of reversing defeat is bleak. It struck a bit of a chord, and I mulled the idea over for awhile before coming to the conclusion that, while the official 100 years after the defeat of the Last Battle timeline had it’s appeal I was interested in doing things a little differently. There are plenty of settings foreshadowing a calamity, and many afterwards, but games taking place during the cataclysm are not so common.

My idea was to play a campaign I’ve taken to calling “Midnight: in media res”. Play would start during the last battle, in a little lull in the action that would allow the players to introduce their characters (maybe some flashback scenes) before the assault that turns the battle against them begins. It’s too late to do anything to change the outcome of the battle, so the game is built around what they do next. As I thought about it my sim-brain remembered that most casualties happen during the rout phase of a battle, and that it seemed realistic to expect PCs to get killed in the first session, maybe even in the first assault once play starts. Not generally a good idea... but I decided to go with it. The idea of losing PCs would be built into the game and frequent death would help reinforce the bleakness of the setting. Kinda like Paranoia, only not played for laughs. So a sequence might go like this:

Lets say there are four players. Their PCs are fleeing from the battle when they run into a group of orcs. Combat ensues, and one of the PCs is killed before the orcs are vanquished. They continue their retreat, encountering another group of fleeing soldiers which allows the player who lost the PC to rejoin the party with another PC. As play continues and the party gets further from the battlefield they might find refugees rather than soldiers joining the party etc. etc. I suspect that PC casualties would be highest in the first few sessions before settling down to a more conventional rate. (The present idea is for the replacement PC to be have roughly the same capability as the lost one. The game would not be d20, but in those terms a fifth level casualty would allow for a fifth level replacement and so on.)

Then I found out there is a new edition of Midnight coming out, so my enthusiasm was put on hold in anticipation of the new book.

Yesterday I found myself on RPG.net reading Ross Winn’s “Close to the Edit” columns and ran across this quote:

At one point in my life I had sworn off fantasy. It was simply that the genre was tiresome to me. I had explored damned near every game that I had seen and I was tired of it.
Of course then a friend of mine named Sam decided he wanted to run a fantasy game set in Harn using GURPS. It was a brilliant game. The group played together for damn near two years and I don't recall a bad session in the lot. I always assumed that he had some cool new ideas. What I never realized, until he told me yesterday, was that the entire cycle was ripped off from Richard III. Of course the minute that he said it, I felt like a complete ass for not realizing it. I have read something like twenty-six of Shakespeare's plays, and liked Richard III quite a bit. Still he threw in some other elements that made it different enough that it was entertaining to all of us, and as importantly I think it seemed fresh and new.

in "Everything Old is New Again". The following article, "Gaming the Bard" by the GM of that game expanded on that point and left me with something very interesting to think about.

Today, while at work, I was in the company of another armchair gamer. Unlike me (I prefer fantasy) he likes Science Fiction and is also something of a WWII geek. He just got into GURPS because of their WWII setting, and immediately picked up GURPS traveler as well. I was wondering what I could use for a setting if I were to GM for him. I know he likes space opera and things military, so a military sci-fi setting seemed like a good idea; but how to make it distinctive? Yesterday’s articles came to mind, and the siege of Bastogne popped into my head. As advanced unit in an offensive, cut off by a counter-offensive, trying to hold out until relief arrives. I envision alternating sessions playing the troops under siege and those racing to their rescue... which brought me back to Midnight: in media res. High intensity combat, lots of casualties, high potential for PC death, so better to build it in. Lost half your platoon in an attack? So did this platoon, we’re merging the two units. (Introduce your new PCs please.)

So now I have two campaign ideas with the risk of high PC casualties built in. It’s no longer just a campaign idea, it’s a game idea. Which brings me to the point of this post (see, I’ve achieved germaneness). One of the stronger attractions this idea holds for me is the idea of PC sacrifice. To quote Ani Difranco's sond "Dilate" (totally out of context) “if I’m gonna go down, I’m gonna do it with style”. Sure, a PC could get shot in the back running away, or wind up on the recieving end of artillery; but they could also dive on a grenade or hold off the orcs while the others escape. Death is built in, dying well is a potential goal of play. Which brings me to my dilemma. How do I set things up so that, ideally, everyone at the table can feel that “frog in my throat, eyes getting misty” feeling a great self-sacrifice scene can elicit? How do we make PCs distinctive and “real”, even if they are only around for half an hour? How can players connect with characters they may not be around for that long? In other words, how do I make gallantry above and beyond the call of duty visceral? (If there are any questions, "Above and Beyond" is the games title.

Caveats:
1. Please focus your responses on the question raised in the last paragraph. “Use system X” doesn’t help, “look at how system X handles Y in situation Z” and how that relates to my query could.

2. I’m simmy, I like my deep immersion and plausibility and all that stuff, but what I’m looking for is emotional response from the players, please keep that in mind. I have ideas for mechanics, chargen, task/conflict resolution etc.; what I need are things that will reinforce and encourage play that elicits the "lump in throat" emotional response.

3. Reward systems are in play: if you have an idea that you think might help with point 2, toss it in the ring.

4. "Talk it over" and social contract are insufficient in and of themselves; I think it's safe to say we've moved towards (if not into) narr. I need rules to spotlight and encourage point 2.

Thanks for your time,