So last week I got a request from Michael S. Miller. Kat is working on a serial killer game. It's a cool concept, focusing on the investigation and the victims rather than killer vs. detective. And she wants to use the tarot card reading question that defines Nobodies and Victims in Acts of Evil for victims in the serial killer game.

And well, I can't say the request didn't sting. I've been cooking Acts of Evil since February/March of 2005 and it's still not quite delivering on my design goals. Yet it remains my primary design project. My design goal is to protagonize the non-occultist NPCs, for them to go from being objects and obstacles to the player who's aligned with the power aims of his character, to being, at the audience level, interpersonal subjects. And I think the tarot card question is an important part of what's actually working. So the request to use it felt a little like being looted as a corpse while actually still alive. But Michael and Kat are great, and the serial killer game sounds great, so of course I agreed, no hesitation.

Fast-forward to this week, after a second playtest of the serial killer game, now using the tarot card question mechanic, and Michael has a suggestion for Acts of Evil. In the serial killer game they do these scenes where the victim's question is raised, but left unsatisfied, and he says this really provokes audience interest in the victims. He suggests occultist characters in Acts of Evil might have to do this to non-occultists for Power.

And damn, do I have experience to corroborate Michael's prescription. Running a playtest of Nicotine Girls back in 2003 I fell naturally into framing opening scenes for each character that could be interpreted as her Dreams might be passing her by. And that was all it took to hook the player. So...can it work for NPCs?

Here's the thing though. Acts of Evil started out with much simpler mechanics for humanizing the non-occultist NPCs. Initially it was just Personizing (which I was calling Humanizing) and Derogation. My goal was for play to transform NPCs from objects and obstacles to subjects we care about, so my mechanics had players fictionalizing the humanity of the NPCs...again and again. And it didn't work. Playtesters reported, and local playtests confirmed, that NPCs tainted by victimization just never managed to rise above it, despite subsequent favorable Personizings.

I discussed it at length with Ron. His prescription was to give the NPCs a story arc...which made good sense. The Personizings and Derogations were characterizings of the characters. But in thinking back to my experiences with Vampire play back in the mid-90s, players' endless characterizing of their characters never did anything to create audience interest in them. Audience interest is a function of antagonism to characters with meaningful aims. And despite some sympathy-inducing life chaos and occasional self-sacrifice by non-occultists in Personizing scenes, the NPCs just weren't interesting. Perhaps "break or remain decent" isn't a particularly interesting premise for a character? Does audience interest need the possibility of a character turning the conflict back on the antagonist? So...a story arc? That would certainly take some doing. The NPCs didn't have any stats!

But I built one anyway: the Agency and Congruence mechanics. And in playtesting it was close...so close! In fact it was so close that my primary objective for the Acts of Evil ashcan was to provoke feedback on how I might write text that better guides the players in using Agency and Purpose (and Personizing and Derogation) to create audience engagement for non-occultists NPCs.

But now I have this suggestion from Michael, which seems quite worth considering, and has me thinking about the social logic of my Personizing mechanic. Do we learn to care about others by repeatedly requiring ourselves to express caring? That's the logic behind Personizing. Michael's proposed mechanic suggests we come to care about others when we see their human aims frustrated by antagonism. Maybe they both work. And maybe there's a variety of other ways we come to care about others that could be mechanized. Upon reflection, I think another way we come to care about others is when they get us to do them a favor (e.g. a politician asks you personally to put a sign for his campaign on your lawn, or to make a donation, and suddenly you're more of a supporter than you were previously).

But the mechanics in Acts of Evil that render the non-occultists up for our potential interest are already rather baroque. There's Agency and Congruence, and Purpose, and Personizing and Derogation, and there's various types of interactions in which occultist characters make non-occultists into underlings, or flog and victimize them. So I'm hesitant about further increasing the complexity. If I'm to introduce a new mechanic for provoking player interest in non-occultist NPCs, I think I need to cut something that isn't working as well. and right or wrong, I'm not seriously considering the "do the non-occultist a favor" idea. I can't see how it would work thematically to have the occultist antagonist PCs doing favors for Victims and Nobodies. So the real question is: How do I introduce a flavor of Michael's suggested mechanic to Acts of Evil, and what do I cut from the current mechanics to make room for it?

Well, despite that it's been in the rules since the start, and that I practically built the resolution mechanics around forcing it onto the players, I'm thinking the mechanic that has to go is Personizing. And we replace it with:

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Excruciating

If the player rolls fewer primes than the GM, or the same number of primes, in a Resolution Against Teachers or an attempt to Status Change a Rival to an Underling, then as long as another player isn't making his scene decisions he must choose to have his next scene with a non-occultist NPC who has an Agency stat if there's one in reach of his cosmic or temporal power. And in this case, the player, not the GM, will frame the scene, and the scene must somehow agonize the NPC's Question for the audience, but without actually answering it. And the agonizing must happen in the context of a conflict with the NPC (i.e. an attempt to gain Power or to effect a Status Change). If there's no NPC with an Agency stat within reach of the occultist's powers, the player still chooses to have his next scene with a Nobody or Victim, and still frames that scene, but the NPC's lack of a Question absolves the player of having to agonize it.

So, say we have a pregnant Nobody whose Question is, "Will I have a boy?" An occultist character fails a furious occult contest against a Teacher, and so the player must Excruciate a non-occultist NPC who's within reach of his cosmic and temporal powers. On his next scene, the player of the occultist frames a scene with the pregnant Nobody. It's just after the military funeral of her husband, who was killed by an IED in Iraq. She's being comforted by her sister-in-law. "I don't know how I'll make it without Steve," she says. And she touches her belly, which is only just now beginning to show. "But I hope the baby is a boy. Steve wanted a boy. And now I do too. I want to name him after his father." And the player describes his wounded occultist intangibly entering the pregnant woman's womb to a position alongside the unborn baby, and diverting most of the mother's flow of blood to himself. The roll will be a Resolution Against Nobodies.

So the question is, does that scene capture your interest to the mother better than a Personizing would?

Paul

So basically, you have to take the Nobody's question...raise it...twist the knife in it...but don't ruin it or the Nobody to the point where the question becomes moot.

So our interest in the Nobody becomes predicated on the notion of "How will she get past this...", "What'll happen to her next".

I think that can work.  Its essentially the formula that drives most day time / night time soaps and most reality TV shows.  The characters themselves are typically 2 dimensional, stereotyped, shallow as hell, and by and large not really all that interesting as individuals.  But yet we keep tuning in, we keep talking about it at work the next day, because the whole "OMG what's going to happen to her next" thing is strangley compelling.

BUT: is that protagonizing?

I won't try to answer that because I know you have some pretty solid ideas of what you mean by the term, so I'll leave the exercise to you.  But I guess my question would be...just because we're now interested and engaged with the Nobody...does that make them a "protagonist"...or much like the cardboard cut out, interchangeable Nobodies on the reality show of your choice...are we more interested in the events that are occuring than in the people.

Part two would be...does that matter?  If you were to decide that "damn, it...now they work, but they still aren't really protagonists" is that a failure...or a sacred cow to shoot and move on?

Hi Paul,

I think that may be a stronger step. It definitely pushes at the darkness. It gives the players some control over the NPC which I've argued is needed for us to come to feel for them. Will it get you to where you want to go? Like Valamir, I'm unsure as I'm not exactly sure of your goals. I know my first playtest with you my only frustration was in not being able to answer the victims question, but maybe being forced to poke at it would have been fun. Is your intention to have the players start with the occultist as their protagonist and then shift their focus of who the person the story is centering on to the victims? I'll go forward assuming I'm right, in my headstrong way.

I've been thinking about this post for part of the day and wondering about the wall you're hitting. Here's some things I think may be getting in the way.

Rightly or wrongly I think many people consider NPC's as plot points/devices, we are trained this way. Think of all the advice you've heard for GM's about not getting to attached or into an NPC. Likely because with the disparity of power in the GM's favor, if the GM plays as a protagonist it basically shuts the players out of the story. So they tend to be used as plot points, humor, challenge, etc, but not protagonists. I think this is a large wall you are trying to work against. I would compare it to the wall that says we have to make up characters before we can play the game. Putting the players into having some control over the victims through framing scenes I think begins to attack that wall.  Will it be enough for your goals? I don't know.

An interesting break of this wall, that may or not be helpful is Burning Empires. I would almost argue Burning Empires is GM-less and is instead a team based rpg, with two sides. One side sets target numbers and plays alone, the other side has multiple members to team up on the single player and holds the reward system in it's hands. Taking the stance that the game is a competition from the get go and weighing the system to facilitate the balance between players and GM let's the GM pull out all the stops and use the NPC's as Protagonists.

The second problem I see is the game rules don't acknowledge at what point the victims become protagonists. I mean when I start feeling more for the victim and wanting to tell their story, what happens? How do I do that? Or is the point I start to feel sick of what I'm doing and question my evil ways, sabotage my character, or become a protector? How do I know this is the point of the game by the rules design? Is it a bad game session according to what you want if some players play for the godhood and not interest in the victims?

Hi, Paul.

To answer the simple question of "Does this provoke audience sympathy better than Personizing?" I'd have to say yes.

Personally, and I know my bias is showing here, I still think it doesn't go far enough. I guess I'm still thinking of AoE as MLwM turned inside-out, with all players playing a Master. One of the great things about MLwM is how every single scene hammers on the same point: "This is a dysfunctional relationship. This is wrong and cannot last." In Horror Revealeds, and Violence/Villiany the litany is: "Look how much pain and suffering this is causing in the world. It is wrong and cannot last." In Overtures the message becomes "There is another, better way. There is still hope. This state of affairs cannot last." In scenes with the Master the message becomes "Look how badly he treats you. This is wrong and cannot last."

I want every scene in AoE to have the same power. Like Ralph, I can't say that I'm 100% certain of my interpretation of your message, Paul, but if it is "Other people matter" then every scene should hammer on that. The suggestion I was trying to make was that in order to get Power from a Nobody or Victim, the occultist needs to agonize (great word, Paul!) their Question without answering it. That will get the players thinking about the NPCs between turns.

This would require that all Victims and Nobody's have Questions. The whole Congruence being a part of the occultist that he has denied thing will, I think, be neatly addressed by forcing the players to create the Questions. If I, as a player, have created this occultist that is focused only on power, then any impulse I have to sympathize with any other character is something within myself that I've put aside in order to focus on my occultist. Forcing me to dredge up those impulses and think about them increases the amount of sympathy and interest I will have in the NPCs I'm forced to create and address Questions for.

Clyde also brings up a good point:

Clyde wrote:
The second problem I see is the game rules don't acknowledge at what point the victims become protagonists. I mean when I start feeling more for the victim and wanting to tell their story, what happens? How do I do that? Or is the point I start to feel sick of what I'm doing and question my evil ways, sabotage my character, or become a protector? How do I know this is the point of the game by the rules design? Is it a bad game session according to what you want if some players play for the godhood and not interest in the victims?

Hey Ralph,

[Color=Red]BUT: is that protagonizing?

No, I don't think it is, not of itself. My current thinking is that compelling protagonism requires two things: 1) a character with understandable human aims which are jeopardized by antagonism, and 2) the character having an ability, however improbable, to realize his or her aims, and/or thwart the objectives of antagonists.

And what I had in the most recent playtest draft was very very close. The Agency and Purpose mechanics were almost delivering on #2. And the Congruence mechanics were almost delivering on #1. But not quite.

What happened in play was the non-occultist NPCs would suffer a series of victimizations, would perhaps embody pathos via a nice Personizing or two among all the abuse, and then maybe they'd explode in a single scene on behalf of not-well-expressed aims, or as a powerful threat to a player character's occult ambitions. It wasn't a story arc. It was power that didn't seem to come from the character. It was startling, and dramatically awkward. It was a crude and abrupt parody of protagonism.

But y'know, it was almost interesting.

So I'm hopeful that ditching Personizing (which in retrospect was pretty much a non-contributor) in favor of agonizing the NPCs' aims will smooth out the abruptness...and we'll see a more natural and believable expression of human spirit in the face of motivated antagonism.

I'm really itching to playtest it.

Paul