OK,

I just completed the session summary for my last Vinland game, and I thought it was a particularly interesting case. So this session members of the Brygjafael clan were going to undergo a ritual (a "vision-quest") to make the mustang a totem spirit for their clan. This was an idea came up with by one of the players (Liz, Kjartan's player) -- as a way to bridge the cultures and religions between the native "Lagakin" tribes and the viking colonists ("Vinlanders"). The prophetess PC Silksif had come up to visit the Brygjafaelers around Christmas, and would conduct the ritual for them. She had spoken to the mustang spirit, and it had told her that it would test them -- and that the test would be "whatever is most difficult for them".

I have a session summary up at
http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/vinland/campaign/sessions/session48.html

The session came in two acts of a sort, which coincidentally were separated by a 40-minute break as I put our 3-year-old son to bed. The first was negotiating a bit what the ceremony would be like and who would be a part of it -- whether the women of the clan would be a part (related to the viking tradition of prophetesses), or only the men (related to the Lagakin tradition).

The interesting part to me was about the connection between the first act and the second. The first was very detailed conversation and interaction within the real world. The second was their spirit journey where they were individually tested by the mustang spirit. At a simplistic level, one might say that the first half was Simulationist and the second half was Narrativist. The first half had an example I referred to elsewhere, that a player was looking up online about hypothermia during the game. The second half, though, had very pointed tests of spirit.

Liz wrote a bit about what it was like to her:

this is hard to explain but in short: John perfectly pegged us all with "quests" that were actually difficult for us in character and out, so, agonizingly hard choices for both our characters in-game, and tweaking us on some aspect of our real life personality. I don't know how he does this.... The wolf actually tempted me to chuck it all and join the wolf clan instead by insulting the intelligence of herd animals... When I realized that I could not accept the Tree's offer to put down roots, drink from the well and grow taller by learning, and that on every branch and twig were all the different kinds of knowledge possible to know - this because I could not reach the damn rune sticks in the hollow of the tree... I had to actually chop at the tree either to make the hollow bigger or (what I did) choose a branch and chop it off and use it as a tool to extend my reach. Now, believe me that I nearly had my character chop his own hand off and leave it as an offering to the Tree in apology! But I kept it to just cutting myself and letting it drip on the cut branch. The character is a viking poet who is ambivalent about war and peace and great events. This got to me in RL on many levels

After last night, I am in awe of John's GMing abilities. I was pretty much expecting the ritual to be a by-the-numbers test of bravery and strength, probably with lots of dice-rolling. I never dreamed the trials would actually transcend the game and become challenges for the players themselves, but that's exactly what they did. I was also completely fooled by the fake battle and I seriously agonized over Bjarni's dilemma.

Even after Liz's episode with the tree was over, I figured there was no way the same level of meta-game challenge could be repeated for me and Bill, but boy was I wrong.

I've been meaning to get to this!

Liz wrote: John perfectly pegged us all with "quests" that were actually difficult for us in character and out, so, agonizingly hard choices for both our characters in-game, and tweaking us on some aspect of our real life personality. I don't know how he does this.... (my emphasis)

lumpley wrote: It's clear you knew your players and read their subtle cues about what would engage and challenge them. Can you talk about what some of those cues might have been?

And then, how did you create a challenge that would fulfill the player's want-for-challenge? There was the player throwing clues at you, spoken and un-; how did you go about building a challenge from them?

And THEN, there you were playing the challenge out: how did you know when you'd grabbed the player? At what point did you yourself go "...yeah! Gotcha!"? How sure were you going into each challenge that you'd judged correctly?

John wrote: Poul had a lot of stuff going on which I could touch on, but I didn't really analyze it all out. It just sort of struck me at some point that his test had to be one of trust. Once I had that it became clear that the test had to be trusting someone whom he had no reason to, that he had no leverage on -- such as the wolf spirit.

lumpley wrote: Ah! Now that's what I'm talking about. What was going on with Poul's player that it struck you? When the idea came to you to have the test be trusting someone with no reason, how did you confirm with yourself that you were on the right track?

I've played lots of games where the GM had invented challenges and they didn't suit the players at all, they were lame, the GM was inventing challenges to suit himself and nobody else really gave a crap.

After re-reading the session description carefully, one other thing strikes me about these tests. Contrary to a fair number of RPG tests I've seen, each one of these requires the PC to do something "stupid." I'm here thinking of the sense of "stupid" that commonly makes other players say, "Okay, you deserve to get hacked, Dave; that was really stupid." For example, "There's an onrushing stampede of bison? I charge."

Each of these tests requires this. You have to choose among bad options, not find the right answer. It's not like an old dungeon trap, where there's a valid solution that entails your doing fine. In order to succeed, you have to fail, and you have to do so quite brutally. Furthermore, there's nothing glorious about the loss: you don't get to sacrifice yourself grandly for everyone else in a big fight.

For Kjartan to succeed, she has to break the test. Everything is set up such that there seems to be a legitimate and acceptable answer, but there really isn't. You have to do a terrible, even criminal thing. You have to want to succeed that badly. The whole time the player is probably thinking, "I really hope this is a good idea, because if it isn't I'm offending just about every spirit being there is."

For the smith to succeed, he has to trust a wolf -- a symbol of folks who are not the friends of the mustang he wants to befriend -- and tear his arm off. The whole thing seems like a temptation: you can let me do it, says the wolf, and all you have to do is lose an arm (player may think, but of course it's only a dream, so it's not a punishment). In other words, you can do it yourself or trust somebody fundamentally untrustworthy and get off easy. The right answer is to trust and lose your arm, not to blunder on stupidly and hopelessly. He doesn't even get to sacrifice himself nobly, because he really has no idea whether it will work. It's one thing to hand over your arm (if you'll pardon the pun) for a goal visible in front of you, but to do it on trust that a dangerous animal will actually keep its word is quite another.

For Bjarni to succeed, he has to ignore his basic responsibility to his friends. Note the element of trickery here: the player actually believed that his character's friends really were getting hurt. This is the trickiest to pull off, I would think, and I'd really like to know how you got this to work.

If I read this right, you set up tests which require the PC's to do terrible, criminal, self-destructive things. They have to go against self-preservation, both in the short- and the long-term. This demonstrates that they really mean what they say, i.e. that they really want the totem.

Am I reading correctly?

I do have one question, though. Suppose Liz (Kjartan), for example, had decided that cutting the tree could not be a legitimate answer, and had proceeded to bang her head against the problem endlessly. What would you have done?

Chris Lehrich

clehrich wrote: If I read this right, you set up tests which require the PC's to do terrible, criminal, self-destructive things. They have to go against self-preservation, both in the short- and the long-term. This demonstrates that they really mean what they say, i.e. that they really want the totem.

Am I reading correctly?

clehrich wrote: I do have one question, though. Suppose Liz (Kjartan), for example, had decided that cutting the tree could not be a legitimate answer, and had proceeded to bang her head against the problem endlessly. What would you have done?

John, went to check out game summary and wanted to find more, but was unable to acces through your website at darkshire. Can you put the link for all the summaries.

I've been interested in a Vinland-type game for some time, so maybe I can gleen some inspiration from yours. Also, this is my first example of a RQ session.

Noticed the parallels between what you did and "No News of Thaw" which I may run for my Champions. However, I liked what you did better since it was so much more directed at the PCs.

thanks!

Sigurth wrote: John, went to check out game summary and wanted to find more, but was unable to acces through your website at darkshire. Can you put the link for all the summaries.

Sigurth wrote: I've been interested in a Vinland-type game for some time, so maybe I can gleen some inspiration from yours. Also, this is my first example of a RQ session.

Noticed the parallels between what you did and "No News of Thaw" which I may run for my Champions. However, I liked what you did better since it was so much more directed at the PCs.