Ethnicity and Fantastic Worlds

Ethnic Breakdowns
So on my most recent trip to Borders armed with a 33% off coupon I picked up a copy of Maximum City-- a writer's look at modern Mumbai. I like books about cities, but usually prefer histories. While I've only just begun reading it I've been struck by the diversity and detail density of the various ethnic and cultural groupings the author tosses around. They have their own roles, perceptions and independent life. That hit me coming off of a morning of hearing about ethnic grouping tensions in Pakistan and elsewhere. I can recall the arguments back from my college days about the relative importance of ethnic identity-- and the thinking that such identities would end up minimized in a modern, interdependent world. That's certainly proven not to be the case-- with the reduction of the bi-polar world we've ended up with the concerns of smaller and smaller groups driving major issues.

But I suspect I'm also reacting to how casually the writer tosses around these ethnic/caste names and assessments. Perhaps there's a touch of white liberal guilt there-- but I flinch a little when I see those kinds of stereotypes stated so baldly. The author's was raised for a good deal of his life in the West, so that's probably deliberate. But the whole thing struck a familiar chord with me as well. I'd seen that kind of treatment of cultural groups as absolutes before-- in game sourcebooks. Since sourcebooks have to carry information quickly and easily for the readers, they often deal with ethnicity or nations as monolithic. You'll get a weasel word like “typically” but general they stick with a shorthand description and characteristics.

Ethnicity and Fantasy
Of course that got me thinking about how I treat ethnicity and cultural identity within my campaigns, especially in the fantasy campaigns. Ethnicity has two major components in this case: history and cultural behaviors. At least those are the two that the players will most likely have contact with. I'll admit that in my games, these layers often get only minimal treatment for a couple of reasons.

First, players have map and navigate an alien world when they enter into the game. As GMs it is our obligation to provide some easy signposts and markers for the players. So generally, ethnicity is equal to nationality. If a person is from a particular country, then if there are cultural traits of that country they're homogeneous for that country. Those traits provide an “Ur” template which can be measured against. Players have a name for the country/nation and can assign values to those more easily. Unless the game will be long-term in a particular place or if the players have spent a good deal of time within the campaign world, I don't want to slice the groups up into further pieces.

Second, and not too far from that point, is that not dividing those areas up is easier for me. Just as keeping things limited in scope-- based around easy archetypes and stereotypes-- helps the player grasp the setting, it also makes it easier for me to remember what's going on and to sell a particular idea quickly and easily. World buildings a little easier when I can keep things on a nation/country scale. One of the problems with dealing with ethnicities, from my point of view, is the question of detail creep. If one country has a diverse population with several different ethnic groups, then what about others? How do those play into the history of the continent or region? We start getting into questions of dress, accent, cultural modes. I may move to these considerations, but only as they really serve the plot-- and only with some hesitancy.

Overdoing It
There's also the question of highlighting real world problems-- racism, cultural bias, religious tolerance, and even immigration-- in the context of a game. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I don't want to shy away from dealing with interesting and difficult questions. On the other hand, I also don't want to be heavy-handed or preachy about these things. Fiction, especially speculative fiction, often uses analogues to stand in for other social questions. The problem I have is that these are often so constructed, so built to avoid the difficult dimensions of a problem or situation that they lose power. Plus there's the question of complexities of the fantastic situation-- I mean, for example there's a certain amount of biology is destiny implied in racial behaviors in a lot of fantastic fiction-- how do we deal with those. What are the limits of determinism there? The flip side of this lies in some expectations on the part of players. Black and White morality is inherent in a good deal of classic fantasy-- LoTR for example-- and players enjoy playing within those codes. Having the classically “evil” creatures turn out to be good or at least morally neutral-- done as a surprise and with emphasis can be done every once in a while. It should be constructed for a particular moment. Having it happen all of the time, that can be a problem.

I guess the main detail here is about the expectations of the audience. How much of what I do in terms of GMing is for my own satisfaction about the world and how much to serve the player likes and dislikes. I think that's a slightly different question than the one concerning actual play at the table. At the table, I think player interests and desires trump GM desires. But in terms of building the world and developing background, I think there's a greater level of parity in terms of what I create.

I do worry about various events and structural set ups in my games being taken as advocating a political position. I don't want to be a heavy-handed moralist. I've seen and read too much bad sci-fi and fantasy that hamfistedly takes a real world situation. I don't want to do that-- in either direction. I don't want to sell a particular positive or negative perspective, but I do think there's an inevitability to some of my perspective bleeding through. At the same time I have to recognize that there's a real complexity of class, social heritage, history and so on. A game can only marginally touch on that.

Actual Play Questions
Beyond the historical backdrop there's some question of the actual play at the table. I'm a GM who likes to do voices-- but my skills are fairly limited. So I'm always afraid when I try to do a particular ethnicity. More broadly, I'll admit I'm a little more self-conscious about it when I'm trying to carry off an impression of a hoodlum gangbanger. But I think I'm more ludicrous than offensive.

But the genre and popular senses of it do seem to promote a pretty narrow vision of ethnicity. I hunt various art sites, like Deviant Art and ConceptArt to find images to use at the table to represent NPCs. Finding non-Caucasian fantasy character is really tough. I can find Asian characters-- but more often than not they're either bishonen or dressed in strongly oriental garb. Try finding a black or Hispanic character and you're generally out of luck. I'm more likely to find a character with solid blue or red skin. The problem's not as bad with modern games-- but again, most illustrations of black or Hispanic characters tend to be “street” or gang related.

That's a problem where I've established a particular nationality as having non-white skin. For example, in my campaign I established long ago that the people of Atlantae had dark skin. But that often got forgotten-- and once fantasy images became readily available on the web, I started to make significant exceptions. I tried to establish that the highest of the nobility have the darkest skin, so lighter skinned Atlantaens would exist but be marginal. However that's a kind of apology. It wasn't until Guild Wars: Nightfall came out that I had access to a wide variety of non-Caucasian characters in interesting fantasy costumes.

Nature vs. Nurture
I think the question of Nature versus Nurture lies at the heart of this. Most classic fantasy fiction seems to suggest Nature as dominant. That always makes me a little leery because of the way eugenics and sociobiology have read those ideas. But Tolkien, the grandaddy of fantasy fiction, seemed to hold to that. I think the LoTR movies skirts that, but we have a world were Elves are inherently good, with the “blood” of High Men dividing humans, and so on. I think once PCs come into contact with that world the situation actually becomes more complicated and real.

But I'll point at another game setting which seems to me to have a problematic treatment of heritage as destiny: Werewolf: the Apocalypse. The other big two major World of Darkness books have the players as transformed or educated into a group. If you're bitten by a Vampire of a particular type, you carry on that type. If you're trained by a certain Mage line, you probably take on those philosophies. On the other hand, in Werewolf, you're born into a family. Your line, tribe and type really determine not only your abilities but how the other groups will treat you. You also have issues of in-breeding and the Metis. What always threw me about that is how a modern, liberal perception of equality works out in that society. Not that everyone is equal, but that there should be an equality of treatment. How does that philosophy react when smashed into the hierarchical and hereditary determinism of that society?

In the End
I've run around this topic quite a bit. A game is an escapist fantasy on the one hand, but on the other I don't want an entertainment which reinforces dangerous philosophies. It might be a shallow response, but I do think being able to acknowledge and reflect that these kinds of problems can arise is a kind of answer. I knew of a person who wouldn't let their children read things like Lord of the Rings because it presented a black and white view on good and evil. I think that's more than a little crazy. I do think we as GMs ought to be aware in our world building. On the one hand we want an easily communicable world, but on the other hand we don't want a simplistic world-view.

Story Beats and Showing Victory

I've been talking about Laws' Hamlet's Hit Points for the last couple of posts, something which dovetailed nicely into my previous discussion on Threat, Tension, Risk and Damage. I'm going to keep using his terminology here. What do I think people ought to take away from HHP? First, a sense that moving between Hope and Fear can increase a story's impact. Second, an awareness of the actual beats at a game session can be a worthy exercise. I think being reflective on this process benefits GMs and players. That being said, the game table has a set of additional complexities that standard narratives don't. Some of these Laws addresses directly and some he hints at. We have to be prepared for these complications to completely screw up a session.

Audience
Laws' analysis forces us to consider how the audience is situated. In a standard dramatic feature the audience remains passive. In an rpg, the audience switches between a passive and an active state. As well, an rpg narrative tends to be a group activity-- with a significant level of collaborative interaction within the narrative. But that's not always the case. Games move between Group beats and Individual beats. Some impact a single player-- yet even at that moment the other players read the Hope/Fear movement-- they become a passive audience (well, except for kibitzing). I suggested in my breakdown of the Changeling session that there may also be a significant break between player desires and character desires. Players may enjoy being placed in threatening or awful situations when that gives their characters something to do. The same scene, viewed by an outside audience, would read distinctly as a Fear beat.

What Should a Game Do?
A game ought to provide players with a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment while at the same time allowing a GM to fulfill his/her needs. That's a kind of odd formulation-- and one which suggests some oppositional nature in the relation of players and GMs. Let's skip considering GM-free or extremely collaborative rpgs, as I think those are a relatively small fraction of games. They're also not the ones I'm running right now. Some games impose limits on what the gamemaster can do-- for example Burning Wheel and Dogs in the Vineyard. That interesting approach isn't one I'm ultimately comfortable with beyond a short-term test. In conventional games I've seen GMs who buy into a struggle between the players and the GM, creating an oppositional conflict. That conflict isn't like a game of Descent where both sides have balanced goals and resources and where there's a winner. The RPG 101 in just about every book suggests that role-playing games have no winners or losers.

But that's not exactly true. Where you have GM/PC oppositional struggles, what's being fought over shifts. The GM wants you to succeed-- but purely on their terms. So interactions the GM sees as unimportant become devalued. Build options the GM finds problematic get reduced. Investigative tactics which don't follow the course of the story get ignored. This is different from newbie GM uncertainty about how to handle things outside of the planned story. Instead we have a GM who sees control as victory, but at the same time pays lip service to “what do you want to do?” That kind of control is a need, just as some GMs really want to tell a cool story, some really want to play with the mechanics, some want a tactical combat, and so on. Those power/control needs rarely balance the equation by providing the players with satisfaction.

Beyond the Table
Anyone who has played rpgs for some time knows you can't overestimate the impact of these off-table dynamics on play. I've seen that referred to as meta-level interactions, and in this I'd also lump in the actions and reactions at the table that arise not from the game itself but from other feelings, recriminations or social perceptions. Some of that gets expressed pretty badly-- I've watched many arguments over rules details and interpretations which clearly weren't really about that. Instead they revolved around some kind of strange implicit social interaction. The all-afternoon raging battle over who would win in a battle between Boba Fett and Darth Vader in Star Wars d6 destroyed a little piece of my soul. I've seen the same kinds of arguments in low detail and high detail systems. I think the only difference lies in high detail systems providing more cover for the real matters of power at hand.

Clearly there's a great deal of ego wrapped up in creating a character and attaching oneself to it. And there's even more ego wrapped up in running a game world. Both sides invite a level of vulnerability and openness to failure that some people find tough to reconcile. In some ways high detail systems work better for these situations as they provide solid ground for making resolutions explicitly and with some perceived “balance.” Based on sales and discussion that obviously works well for a good number of groups and I think it would be wrong to dismiss that.

Clarify Victory
That's why, with a narrative-heavy game, I think it is even more necessary and important for the GM to clarify victory. A detail-heavy game has an explicit win/lose ratio most of the time, and failure often comes from random die rolls. That provides an easy out for attachment. These games often have more conflict situations with crunch-- combats that lasts some time and plays out like a sub-game or a tactical miniatures game (with the associated sense of victory). Games with a greater narrative focus often have different kinds of conflict, and those conflicts may be resolve fairly quickly. The challenge focus may instead be on the dramatic choices the character makes, the social interactions they follow up on, the exploration of the environment. That's certainly the case in most of my games.

Don't Undercut
Even GMs that provide opportunities for clear victories can destroy those. GMs stuck in a power balance conflict can use the timing of Hope/Fear as form of a passive/aggressive response. We had a GM for Cyberpunk for a long time who specialized in that-- undercutting successes immediately after the fact. As a rule, reversing or disparaging a player's success is a bad thing to do. Avoid downplaying the opposition after the fact or suggesting the players only won through good/bad luck. I had the experience of that undercutting in one of the worst places, a campaign finale. After my character's apparently heroic death, the GM offhandedly commented that my actions had been stupid and useless, as an NPC could have solved the problem, rendering my actions null. When I was running, I had a similar incident in which a character won a hard-fought battle and defeated an enemy one-on-one. When they awoke the body of the adversary had vanished-- a classic trope in my thinking. However, the player reacted badly to that-- clearly seeing that as undercutting of their victory. I made sure that within a beat or two I had an NPC confirm that the adversary had died. But the damage had been done and the player still read the mystery of the vanished body as a deliberate destruction of their actions, rather than a new plot element.

Baggage Affects Reception
In some cases, meta-game circumstances can impact the degree and seriousness of the Hope/Fear beat . Early in my Arcane Rails campaign, I put forward a mystery since one of the players had described themselves as a kind of detective. When presented with the Fear/Down beat of a mystery his reaction was less tension and more absolute shut down. It became clear that he saw mysteries in games as insoluble. Based on past experience (including his own gamemastering) he thought that I as the GM would simply shift who the murderer was based on their investigation-- preventing the group from actually winning. In this case baggage carried by the audience significantly affected play.

I've also seen more immediate baggage and events affect players. I had a session where two players had clearly had some kind of argument outside the game. They second-guessed and undercut each others' suggestions. That meant that they read the Fear beats of the game as worse than they were and eventually shut themselves down-- eliminating their ability to fruitfully follow up. That negative reaction, at the beginning of an extended sequence, poisoned things. Even later successes would end up colored by that for the players. More often I've seen players bothered by outside circumstances deliberately ignore beats and move to game-destructive behavior-- usually aimed less at the GM and more at fellow players.

Multiple Readings
Players may also not value some kinds of beats. Generally, I read social interaction beats in which the player makes a connection or deepens a relationship with an NPC as a success or a Hope beat. However players may have a different stance or perception of those moments. They may read those interactions as simply decorative and unimportant. Or they might see the beat as purely procedural, like a Pipe beat where the NPC serves as an information kiosk to get directions to the next moment. If a player's been in games where NPCs don't have a role, then these kinds of expectations make sense. But the beat mis-read can also be that a player has an unhealthy attachment to their character. In this case, interactions that I as the GM see as Hope, the player might read as negative or Fear. This arises from the player not getting exactly the response they expect from the NPC or not having their character's image validated by the interaction.

I've also had to handle instances where players seemed to be pleased with Hope beats or else embraced the possibilities of the Fear beats presented. At the table, they appear to accept (in the Impro sense) the moment. However away from the table they fret about those moments. They rework motivations, second-guess their decisions (or the decisions of others), add new fears and threats, and rewrite the events in their heads. If in following sessions the GM tries to add ideas or incidents based on the player's original response or involvement, it generates a completely different reaction. In some cases a fairly hostile one. I'm used to players rewriting the stories they tell themselves in their heads about their characters actions (and even their own player actions at the table). What's more difficult to work with as a GM is when players re-imagine successful moments at the table into unsuccessful ones and then act on that later. That kind of reaction can be a minefield for GMs trying to chart a beat analysis path-- and beyond that for GMs trying to assess what players want.

Little Fears vs. Lingering Fears
When I spoke about tension and risk in an earlier post, I mentioned micro versus macro level risk and reward. I think that distinction can be applied to our understanding of beats. For example, we have threat in a combat situation. That's a micro-level situation-- both in terms of time and impact*. The threat usually comes from the immediate combatants and may shift up and down rather quickly. But macro level threats can't be dealt with by the players so quickly and usually linger. In this case we're talking about unanswered questions, newly appearing adversaries, breaking of friendships and so on. In a combat scene, usually most of the threat or Fear beats get resolved (one way or another) by the end of the scene. For other scenes, those beats may not be resolved-- or even balanced by Hope beats for some time. It think that kind of assessment has to enter into a GM's mental calculation about the squaring one kind of beat against the other.

So the situation becomes more complicated in that we have Fear beats which can linger and players who may read beats differently. We can also have players who draw out the weight and span of a Fear beat well beyond what the GM intends. I'm not saying that this devalues the idea of Beat analysis, but rather I'm saying that the GM should be aware of these kinds of details when trying to understand what happened in a scenario.

The question of lingering Fear beats is one worth pursuing. If too many lingering or higher order fear beats remain, without successful resolution or significantly countering Hope beats, the players may become discouraged. That's a principle Laws suggests. As GMs we have to work to bring those Hope beats forward. Again, that means emphasizing victories and not undercutting them.

The POV Paradox
One of the problems in a game is that as the depth and richness of a game grows, so too does the amount of things that end up going on behind the scenes. That's not to say that these things are out of a players control, but instead they happen outside of the players' vision. Laws', I have to note, addresses this question of POV in his work-- and I think GMs have to take it into account. Let's take Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a common example, and a series which has pretty strong parallels with an rpg campaign. We (the audience) get to see more of the results of the actions of the protagonists (players) in scenes where henchmen come back to report on their failures, where bad guys become angry, where they end up forced to respond to the actions of the heroes.

However at the game table, that becomes harder to point out-- or at least the classic tools aren't there. So what are our conventional options: rumors and explanation from other NPCs, villain soliloquies, finding evidence about canceled or changed plans and so on. Beyond this we also shouldn't underestimate the power of meta-commentary: telling the players that they've really messed up the bad guys' plans, suggesting that you have to retool what you were planning because of their success, transparently lying that they're wrong about a particular tactic or plan. There's a good deal of pretend play which the GM can do to try to reinforce successes-- and point them out when they might not be visible to their characters.

Genre Affects Victory Explication
I'd also suggest that the genre and tone of the game affects how much of that you want to do. For example, in my Harry Potter-esque steampunk campaign, I try to make some of those victories more visible. I exaggerate moments to create emphasis-- since the game play is about a certain level of high drama. The players usually win, and I try to make those victories clear. Mind you, the result has a number of consequences. I have to be careful about the Big Plots-- the arcs that I have in mind for the year (read book from the series) and for the campaign as a whole. I have these loosely imagined, not fully plotted. But the players have impacted those plots significantly. I want to make it clear that they've really impinged on the bad guys (forcing them to change what they're doing) without giving too much away about what those big plans are. On the other hand, having those high dramatic Hope beats and an emphasis on Victory does mean that when a large Fear or fail beat happens, it can really throw the players off. We had a session where the group had to escape from an overwhelming assault-- something they hadn't really faced before. For the next couple of sessions the players reverted to more classic, game-y and defensive approaches. I worry a little about that because we're in the middle section of the big story arc-- the time when things become tougher and darker.

A less High Fantasy game, on the other hand, requires a more careful handling of victory. For example, horror, modern, WoD, cyberpunk or the like. The GM has to maintain a careful balance of tension with release here. More things will operate behind the scenes, so smaller and clear victories in front of the players have to be emphasized. That's a difficult balance to strike right-- especially if the theme and the ethos of the genre work against that. Vampire's about a certain kind of avoiding of monstrosity, Cyberpunk's about humanity in the face of technological nihilism, Changeling's about trying to build trust and self in a world of isolation. But the GM has to provide the player with some stable ground-- and make it clear what that ground is.

The temptation for GM is to keep too many macro-level lingering threats in the air. Keeping the players unsure about even the most basic resources can be attractive-- high tension!, but without any firm fallback players can become morose, disconnected or destructive. In both my Vampire and Changeling campaigns, I tried to establish (after some initial feeling of isolation) a safe refuge for the players. Concerns like shelter, food and so on would be there at the beginning, but would go away rather quickly. Mind you these safety nets only exist if the players believe they exist-- and there's part of the problem as well. As a GM I want to create tension and I will threaten and scare-- but to a certain extent I'm play-acting. I won't deliberately destroy those resources and that refuge of the players. Threaten, yes. Destroy, no. Players who have played with me for a number of years know that-- but they're usually generous enough to play along with me. But that approach doesn't work if the players haven't developed that trust with the GM.

What Does That All Mean?
I'm not entirely sure-- but I think it means reading the beats at the table better and showing players that they have affected things-- even when their characters might not be able to see that. Games have a strong tension between the need to maintain threat and menace and the reality that the game is also an immediate social reaction space. At the same time that the GM needs to be aware of how much threat weighs on the players, players need to be aware of how much their stance may be affecting their reception of the game.

*Usually...some games have no time concept as such, like HeroQuest 2e.

Applying Hamlet's Hit Points: A Changeling Session Analysis

Introduction
Following up from my review of Robin Laws' Hamlet's Hit Points- I thought I would try applying Robin Laws' beat analysis to a game session after the fact. Will that be doable and will that be useful? I didn't take beat notes while playing, so I've reconstructed a minimal sketch for this. Given that I'm working in retrospect, I break the beats into larger chunks than Laws does-- he maps all the beats of scenes and conversations. I think that kind of specific analysis would require a recording of the game. Instead I collapse several beats together. Consider this analysis a level up from the ones Laws presents in HHP, and therefore at least a degree weaker. I should also note that while the arrow images are available as a CC download in several format from Gameplaywright, I'm not using those-- as I haven't installed the more sophisticated image software I do have (Photoshop) and Blogger doesn't accept the presented formats.

The session was one in an ongoing Changeling: the Lost campaign. We have four players, two who have been there from the start and two others who joined more recently, perhaps a half dozen sessions ago. We don't used the nWoD system but instead our home brew, Action Cards. We've done some heavy specific adaptation for this specific setting. The system ends up narrative-focused, based on low rules detail and high trust. For more on this specific campaign and the background you can see some session reports I posted on RPG Geek. We didn't have any combat this session. We actually haven't had an extended combat in the game for a number of sessions. However the threat remained that the group might end up in a serious physical confrontation.

Background
The group is a motley of Changelings in the fictional Midwest city of Wayward. The Freehold is divided between two unusual Changeling Courts-- the Court of Gardens and the Court of Rust. The players are split fifty-fifty in membership of those Courts. While they have many plots outstanding, the most recent threat has been the return of a group of vanished Changelings. They left Wayward 20+ years ago and have just returned, having been lost in the Hedge (this time appeared as a few years to them). These Changelings are the Winter Court, seasonally aligned and apparently dedicated to bringing down the present power structures. They appeared, had a conflict with the PCs and then vanished underground. They represent the most urgent looming threat.

PCs
Sarah No-Tears: A Wizened Physiker
Black Annie: A Darkling-Ogre hybrid
Nick Diamond: A Diamondflesh Elemental
Leo Black: A Hunterheart beast

I've given a quick tag line for easy beat or set of beats followed by the type and (in parens) direction up or down, representing Hope or Fear. I hope my first attempt isn't too wildly off the mark.

1. General BSing: Gratification (Up)
While outside the narrative, I think its worth considering how the general discussion before the game sets the tone of the session. Depending on the topics this might be a Commentary or Anticipation beat. I'd consider this part of the beat analysis in that we're looking at the response-- Hope/Fear-- on the part of the audience, who in this case are participants. Here we talked about potential changes to the damage system and a few of the ideas from Hamlet's Hit Points.

2. Recap of Previous Session: Gratification (Up)
Another meta-moment, but I think an important one. Depending on how the GM sells this, they can create a Hope or a Fear beat to threaten or energize the players from the outset. Of course that depends on where the players left off in the previous session. As I mentioned before, I think the breaks and timing that the session structure implies does affect how the narrative is received. Gratification comes from players first spending their experience points. Buying things always seems like an upwards movement-- unless players find themselves buying to fill in gaps or problems exposed in a previous session. In that case it can be a reminder of a Fear beat or perhaps seem like an obligation.

Continuing the Gratification beat I tried to sum up the events of the previous session quickly, focusing on their victories and successes. That carried through the previously established Hope level and glossed over losses or failures. Obviously I could have approached that from the opposite direction.

3. Overview of Plotlines: Pipe (Neutral)
Still in the out-of-game meta-mode I tried to go over what I saw as the major outstanding “group” plot threads. This lays some pipe for what the players will decide to do this session. I don't want to steer them, but I do want them to know what in my mind (as the GM) stands out as interesting plot threads they might pursue. The players also suggest a couple I haven't mentioned-- which means those are top of mind for them and I ought to make sure to be thinking about those.

4. Group Goal Discussion: Procedural Pipe (Neutral)
Never underestimate the power of the group assessment and discussion to change the Hope/Fear dynamic at the table. If the group's divided or some players are in bad moods, this beat can add problematic tension. On the other hand, if they're on the same page and come together with a plan, then this can increase the anticipation. I try to stay out of the way of these moments and I don't situate them in time and place unless I want to have an NPC chime in to clarify a point or give their perspective. Usually, as in the case of the beat for this session, the planning portion lets the players orient themselves from outside the game and then move to the actual play.

5. Returning Lucky: Procedural (mixed)
The plot from the last session had them hunting down a magical dog named Lucky. I decided not to do a full scene on the return of the dog to its Hobgoblin owner. But I wanted to emphasize the success for the players and especially Black Annie, who'd taken on the quest. So that functioned as an Up beat. However, I then put the player on the spot asking them what they wanted as a reward. They hadn't had a chance to think about that and so my springing that on them managed to actually create a Down beat. So mixed results there.

6. Discussion with Hopscotch: Procedural (Down)
The group decided to share information they'd uncovered about the Winter Court with an NPC, Hopscotch Takebacks. This advanced the plot, but Hopscotch also warned them about the dangers of confronting the Court. While they succeeded in their goal of passing information on and building social links, the discussion here served to build up the looming threat.

7. Hopscotch on the Detroit Changeling War: Procedural (Down)
They also asked Hopscotch for background on a plot thread about the entire Changeling Freehold of Indianapolis vanishing. Hopscotch gave them some further exposition about how the stresses in other Changeling Freeholds and how several nearby stood in a perpetual state of war with Wayward. That raised the general tension and reminded them of the stakes involved.

8. Sticking Hopscotch with the Bill: Dramatic (Up)
I might instead describe this as a Gratification beat. They stuck Hopscotch with the bill for breakfast, as they've done in several previous encounters. A small victory, but a good one at the table.

9. Hunting the Winter Court: Procedural (Up)
I collapse a longer series of tests and exchanges here. Essentially, the group located one of the houses the Winter Court members are laying low in. They wanted to surveil and gather information without being seen. So we have the continual threat of being spotted by the Court (and neighbors) hanging over their process. Using various magics and skills the PCs confirmed some information, got a sense of the grounds, an estimate of number of people, and some other details and hooks they'll be able to use later. I didn't push the spotting threat too much after the first couple of checks-- my primary goal here was to give them a chance to creatively use their abilities.

10. Winter Court members leave House: Procedural (Down)
Three of the Winter Court members leave and the group attempts to follow. The immediate threat here again is being spotted. But the other new question concerns their purposes. The players had to decide to follow as a group or split and leave some to keep watching. This creates an overall fear beat despite the success of their tailing.

11. Follow to Financial Offices: Procedural (Up)
The group follows the three Winter Court Changelings to a local financial management office. After some back and forth, Leo and Sarah get into position to overhear the meeting. I should note we had one of those moments where one of the players asked “Is the building laid out like X...?” I asked him to repeat that and he realized and reframed his statement “So the building's laid out thusly and we can therefore gt around and blah.” I'm trying to be better about making sure players remember they have that power and reacting positively to it.

12. Listening in on the Winter Court: Procedural (Down)
The group gathers information about how the WC has managed to get money, and the threat is introduced that they're working to get access to more.

13. Sabotaging the Car: Procedural (Up)
Again collapsing a series of beats, the two characters not spying on the meeting opt to carry out a secondary plan. Black Annie sabotages the tire on the car, hoping for them to get a distance before they have a flat. Nick plants a magical object in the car so that later he can communicate with it. The threat is discovery but both manage to succeed. The latter plot doesn't end up coming into play (yet) but does count as a success, and contributing to the Hope beat.

14. Winter Court Members Stranded: Procedural (Up)
That work pays off and the WC members find themselves pulling over into a strip-mall parking lot. The PCs follow-- successfully concealing themselves to observe. I test and the Ogre driving the car overreacts, flinging a flat spare tire through the front window of a nearby business. They all break in different directions. The PCs take advantage of the moment to call the police on them, creating an obstacle for the bad guys who want to remain under the radar.

15. Contact Windom Wales: Procedural (Up)
The group contacts another NPC, Windom Wales, an Ogre of the Freehold who had been a financier/banker in his past life. We'd established that he handles the Court of Garden's money. The PCs provide him with information about the Winter Court and ask about the financial group they met with. Windom connects a number of dots for them and provides some other leads. There's some banter back and forth at some of the PCs expense-- Wales tends to be a little cutting in his comments, but that potential Down beat gets overwritten by the connected success of their investigation.

16. Wales Gives Warning: Procedural (Down)
Windom suggests that if the PCs pass on the information to certain people within the Freehold, those Changelings would likely kill those mortal financial people. Some Changelings see the battle with the Winter Court in absolute terms-- and would eliminate anyone allied with them. This places an obligation on the players and brings up new potential consequences.

17. Nick Investigates: Procedural (Up)
After some discussion, Nick decides to return to the offices to get a business card from the senior people. Sarah plans to use that as a magic link. Nick does so successfully, passing himself off as a business student looking for an internship. He hints at a great deal of wealth and eventually wheedles the offer of an internship out of them. Nick's player seems a little hesitant about the potential obligations there, but overall it reads as a victory.

18. Team Builds Cover Story: Procedural (Up)
The group works quickly to pull together the proper paperwork and letters of recommendation Nick needs to support his cover story. Again, several different tests and details get lumped together here (stealing the right letterhead, talking with a forger NPC, confirming details) but the process comes off successfully.

19. Plans Put into Motion: Procedural (Up)
That plan is set into motion-- we confirm that Nick will be able to return next week and possibly have access to more of the files and details of the Winter Court's finances from the inside. Sarah puts into motion a subtle long-term dream-crafting to make the senior manager of the firm suspicious of the Winter Court people with an eye to eventually getting him to cut them off. Both of these are longer-term moments that we take out of chronological order (i.e. they'll occur in the future or take several days). We confirm their starting success, but we'll return to check on those plots next session. I wonder if this would be a montage in a movie?

20. Leo Gets a Car: Dramatic (Up)
Until now the group had been working together pretty strongly on a single procedural/plot track. I'd say that most sessions actually tend to more dramatic beats, so it is good to see things moving forward. To close out the session I moved to doing a “once-around”-- giving each player individual scene(s) which they could set or I could throw something at them.

I started with Leo to give him some payoff for a thread he's started a couple of sessions ago. He's assumed a new role which requires more city travel, so the question of transport arose. He'd petitioned his prince, Brambleteeth, regarding this. I had the previously established Changeling used-car salesman contact him, saying he had one ready for him. I wanted to make sure I paid off the thread he'd started-- without the player having to remind me. Mind you the car had been involved in a murder and had been cleaned, but overall this was a dramatic victory for the player as it gave him some character interaction one-on-one with an NPC and expanded his resources.

21. Nick Called in By the Prince: Dramatic (Down)
Nick's awoken at 2am by the prince of his court, Sybold Futures. In a previous session, Nick had accidentally woken the Prince, so he assumed this was payback. Instead the Prince calls him for a task. Nick meets up and is told to drive Sybold-- he'll give directions as they go. This ends up being a couple of dramatic beats-- putting Nick on his own, exploring his character and the character of the Prince and developing that relationship. There's a looming threat and more questions created than answered through this sequence, creating some Fear beats.

22. The Break-In: Dramatic (Down)
Sybold tells Nick not to tell anyone about what they're about to do (a big Down beat). They break into an apartment and Sybold has Nick pull the covers off a bed while he stands by. A shocked Hopscotch (an allied NPC to the PCs and the one they consulted earlier) wakes up. The beat hangs for a moment and some of the players are pretty sure Sybold's going to snuff Hopscotch. Instead the Prince demands some items he says that Hopscotch has and tells him he has 24 hours to return them. They leave and Sybold has Nick drop him off. There's a light Up exchange in there where Nick hints that he'd really like a car, but again this sequence appears to be a series of Fear beats. There's some Pipe being set down here as well-- the items Sybold wants references to a plot point a PC opted not to investigate months ago. As well there's some off-hand comments and references that provide some character deepening and hints about both of these NPCs.

I should note that there's something interesting happening here as well. In defining the Hope and Fear beats we consider the character as the subject, but with the player as the audience. Here in this sequence we have threats, unanswered questions and such-- but at the same time the player gets some great individual table time. Nick's player seemed to enjoy the sequence-- and seemed energized by the scene-- and the other paths/interaction possibilities it opened up. I think that suggests we need to consider the table situation-- how it might affect if a player really reads a moment as Hope or Fear. I've seen sessions where players read Hope beats as Fear beats, but that's something for another post.

23. Black Annie Gathers Flowers: Dramatic (Up/Mixed)
Black Annie gets a phone call from the NPC Songbird Rex. This beat is a payoff from an earlier session in which Annie tried to build some ties with this character. She'd asked about some agricultural stuff and so Rex calls to offer her first shot at some greenhouse flowers being thrown out. The beat ended up a little mixed-- with some dramatic character interaction between the two. Annie gathered the flowers for a particular purpose and so was able to illustrate and act on her character's interests. On the other hand, there were some down notes since the flowers were being destroyed because of heavier winter (a result of the Winter Court's return) and Songbird Rex remained his taciturn self (which has been a constant and lingering issue). In the past Annie's worked on trying to communicate and push Rex a little, but her player here focused (legitimately) on other goals for the scene.

24. Sarah's Encounter with Valkrym: Dramatic (Up)
Another individual PC beat which completed an earlier plot thread. Sarah had put effort into making contact with a mysterious non-Changeling supernatural with knowledge of Wayward. Valkrym showed up again and we began with some character interaction beats. It also represented the outcome of previous work so I'd consider that an Up beat.

25. Sarah Presses Valkrym: Procedural (Mixed)
The conversation continues with Sarah specifically referencing some details they'd uncovered-- rather than moving more slowly with the interaction. There are a couple of sub-beat exchanges here moving a plot forward. On the one hand, it serves as an Up beat as Sarah confirms Valkrym as a source of information and she builds a bridge. On the other hand, it also moves towards the Fear side as the NPC puts off more discussion and leaves scryptic hints about what he knows.

26. Leo Continues Training: Dramatic (Down)
Leo's been given the role of the Herald of the Court of Gardens which means he has to learn the who and where of all the Changelings in the Freehold. I've been using that as an opportunity to have him interact with a number of different kinds of Changelings. Here he meets Semolina Pilchard, a Wizened Brewer. She manages to entangle him in some obligation and bring up memories of his past. Once again we have a moment which is a contradiction-- the player enjoys and revels in the chance at some individual time and establishment of future plots, but the overall beat of this interaction is towards Fear.

27. Leo Gets Story from Selianna: Dramatic (Down)
Leo questions the former Herald, Selianna, about something Pilchard said. There's some character interaction as she avoids answering his questions. Instead she reveals some personal, private information. He learns that she's a magnet for doom and she hints at some awfulness she's seen. That's a Fear beat and also confirms some earlier observations by the group.

OVERALL
We probably actually got started really playing at about 8:30 (Beat 3) and finished up at about 11:45. That's a slightly longer session than usual. We had quite a bit of procedural work in this session. My perception is that we do more dramatic beats in sessions than we did here-- but I want to map some more to see if I'm wrong or right about that. I do try to give players individual dramatic time-- and I have to think about what that balance is.

It is probably clear from the structure that I don't usually plot sessions in Changeling, except for special sessions or events. Generally I like to follow where the players lead and present incidents for them to react to. For things like the “once-arounds” I check in with the players to see what they have that they want to follow up on and if they don't have anything immediate I throw them something from my grab bag or (as in this session) try to confirm/close out a previous thread.

I liked doing this map and it did give me some ideas. It made me look at a couple of scenes which had mixed directions. I also noticed that I need to probably give Nick some Up beat opportunities next session, as he had a higher number of isolated Down beats.

So worthwhile as an exercise: yes. And I suspect one which, done infrequently, can reinforce thinking about these issues while running. It is a good deal of work and I suspect I've probably misread a few things here. I look forward to discussing this with the players.

Hamlet's Hit Points: A Review

I've made no secret in my admiration for Robin Laws' work (as you can see from some earlier reviews of his games). Even when he produces something I'd don't care for (Rune) or my group dislikes (The Dying Earth) he manages to feed me concepts that end up distinctly informing the gaming I do. His new book does that again.

What is it?
In Hamlet's Hit Points he breaks down three narratives into their story beats, considering what kinds of beats happen throughout. He analyzes a play—Hamlet, and two films Dr. No and Casablanca. He splits beats generally down into Procedural-- moving the plot along, and Dramatic-- affecting the inner life of the characters. While there are other types presented, these two types make up the vast majority. Laws comments on the relative balance of Procedural versus Dramatic beats as helping to define the various narratives. For example, Dr. No has a greater focus on the procedural than the character-oriented Casablanca.

More importantly Laws considers how each beat affects the Hope and Fear of the audience. Positive elements, successes, victories and so on serve to raise Hope. Threats, losses, recurring villains, failures on the other hand increase Fear. To represents this Laws uses arrows, marked by type (procedural, dramatic, etc), and pointing upwards for Hope and down for Fear to map the narrative. He unpacks and explains that map, supplementing the icons with a deeper analysis of what happens in the beat and why that functions as it does. Laws seems to read the PCs as the audience in making that comparison which works pretty well, but does create a couple of odd moments. As he notes POV in a movie, comic, or novel can move away from the protagonists (as it does at points in each of these narratives). GMs will find that move more difficult to pull off in a game without it feeling gimmicky or odd.

Laws worked with another version of this analysis in HeroQuest 2e. There he referred to the Pass/Fail distinction for beats in a story. HeroQuest actually has some of those distinctions built into the mechanics of the system itself. The relative weight of the Pass/Fail moment helps determine difficult, and the stakes and risks rise as the characters move to the climactic moments. That being said, the Hope/Fear distinction seems a clearer and more useful one than Pass/Fail.

Shifts Create Strengths
Laws suggests an understanding of those Hope/Fail contrasts and shifts in a story can be applied to games. He aims to show how successful and classic stories balance those-- providing a necessary moment of Hope to counter-balance the threats arising from Fear moments. That seems like a simple and perhaps obvious concept, but as with the simple concept that underlies his other work (universality of conflict in HeroQuest, core clues in Gumshoe) Laws does an excellent job providing examples and giving a new take on the ideas. Throughout his analysis of these narratives, he stops off to provide asides and ideas about how specific moments fit with role-playing games. And each narrative provides a different set of opportunities.

His observations throughout feel like he's watched and made notes about every session I've run or played in. I found myself stopping every few pages to mark or highlight a particular comment that gave me a new perspective on the way a game had run. That alone made the book valuable to me-- but the tools he establishes to reading beats in a game have already helped to shape my thinking about gameplay.

One point that struck me is that even “out of scene” moments at the table can be read as Fear beats for players. General joking or bs'ing about a person's character can feel to that player like a downbeat for them. A good GM would be aware of that and provide the necessary counter-beats to keep players form being discouraged. And I think that's crucial in Laws reading: how these narrative beats going too much one direction or the other (and usually tending to the Fear side) can break the audience/players enjoyment of the narrative. Laws' other observations on the difficulty of conveying narrative at the table, foils as dramatic substitutes, beats which require too much reasoning as failures and so on make for a great read. I don't necessary agree with everything Laws suggests, but even where I'm unsure-- he gets me thinking.

Many Ideas
In his reading of Hamlet he sets Hamlet, Horatio and Ophelia as the active PCs. That's an interesting approach in that I'd always pictured Ophelia as a discarded NPC-- one the player uses and then casts off without any real consideration of the NPCs reaction. However, I can certainly buy Laws take on this-- the problem being that even if we treat all three as PCs, we have a games with a real disparity in both the goals of the PCs and in the level of attention given to each PC. I think, though Laws doesn't directly address it, it points at potentially difficulty in a shared narrative space: that characters/multiple protagonists may read the moments of Hope/Fear very differently. How does a GM track that and how do they balance those issues?

Now I don't want to suggest this is as criticism of Laws' approach. Rather I'd say it is a limitation of the chosen narrative form, movies, in that we tend to have either a single (more often) or dual protagonists-- rather than the group of most rpgs. Even those films which feature an apparent group (Flatliners come to mind as one) tend to have a fixation with one character more than the others. I run a Harry Potter-esque game and one of the more difficult tricks is to make everyone feel like their Harry Potter, or at the very least Ron or Hermione, rather than a bit character. In some ways, I think an ensemble drama, like ER or Homicide ends up more like a typical rpg narrative-- or at least closer to my narratives. I'd say that consideration of multiple players does present a fruitful avenue for future thinking.

It is worth noting that Laws really only deals with the question of multiple protagonists for his first analysis; he approaches Dr. No as a solo game and in Casablanca his focus seems to shift to a dramatic/literary analysis rather than a game one. In fact, if there's a weakness to the volume it is that as the analyses move on, we less explicit connection to rpgs. Amusingly, The Dr. No analysis touches home for me as an old school James Bond player. I remember those games as great and fun-- but only aping the James Bond tropes given that we usually had three or four players. I recall running the Dr. No module-- an adventure which pretty much followed the beats Laws' describes here. I would be interesting to compare that to the original book.

Like Sources
I'm a fan of books that look at the larger narrative issues in role-playing games. In the past I've hunted for resources from other areas which might give some insight or even better some useful ideas or techniques—Robert McKee's Story, Jennifer Van Sijll's Cinematic Storytelling, Mieke Bal's Narratiology. But in recent years we've seen a move of books which provide a critical analysis of gaming without being just social studies or scholarly works. Books like Things We Think About Games, Second Person, and Play Unsafe all provide discussion and ideas which GMs and players can apply to the table.

Many Applications
Laws suggests a number of ways to apply his beat analysis. He suggests keeping those elements in mind when planning. I think that's a reasonable suggestion for GMs who map out their scenarios and sessions more deeply than I do. More usefully he points out that this kind of reading would be helpful when reading through an existing module or adventure-- to help the potential GM see the rise and fall of the tension within it. Doing so might allow the GM insight when it actually hits the table.

He also describes using his method in play-- with the GM noting beats and relative Hope/Fear levels as the play progresses. This could work for GMs comfortable with notation and note-taking in play. It might help the GM note the relative distribution of Hope/Fear beats among the players-- perhaps one player seems singled out for more Fear beats without enough corresponding Hope ones. But more important than any concrete technique Laws' approach provides a mindfulness for the GM-- perhaps a better understanding of the dynamics and reactions of players at the table.

Laws warns that applying this kind of analysis to another GM's game could be a form of passive-aggression. GM's playing in other GM's already have a impetus to judge and critique. That energy can be turned however to good play. Laws suggests that an understanding of these beats might allow players to take actions which support and reinforce the dramatic flow of the game. I also wonder if a fruitful tactic might be to have the group, as a whole or individually, do a post-game analysis of a session. The tools of the beat analysis could show if different players read the session differently or perhaps point out new approaches to the players.

Last Note
Gameplaywright has provided the symbols used in the book freely as a Creative Commons download. I'd love to see more work on this kinds of analysis, especially for different forms. I'd also like to see the difference between cultures. For example, the recent wushu adaptation of Hamlet, The Legend of the Black Scorpion (aka The Banquet). I also hope that Gameplaywright continues to produce excellent materials like these.

Threat, Tension, Risk and Damage (Conclusion)

Last part of this and specifics on how to apply this to our house rules.

Part One
Part Two

So I've talked quite a bit about threat and tension, but what I want to consider is how we can meaningfully impact play. To that end, I want to think about damage. So I'm focused here on a micro-concern. It is an obvious and specific mechanic for risk-- but it has a limitation. Damage exists as a threat, a caution to the players and a consequence. But at the same time there's an element of chicken to the system. Will the GM apply enough damage to knock your character unconscious (thereby making you sit out while the others play) or even enough to kill you? Some systems apply penalties when players take a certain amount of damage which provides some additional incentive for avoiding damage. Other systems simply have a gross pool without any additional effects (like d20). That's actually the case in the high fantasy version of Action Cards I run on alternate Sundays.

Not having wound penalties was a deliberate design choice on my part for that-- I wanted to catch some of the essence of Rolemaster, d20 and Final Fantasy Tactics. But I also wanted to keep things simple. I've played games which have percentages of HP at which penalties are applied-- but as simple as those formulas might be, they require the players to track and adjust those things in play, which I don't care for. On the other hand I left out “criticals” from Rolemaster which helped make characters more than a lump of hit points. I have a basic critical system, but with thin detail. RM managed to make every hit given and taken distinct-- with a host of conditions and effects. One the one hand that's an appealing and colorful concept. On the other hand, as executed in systems like Rolemaster (or even Mutants and Masterminds with its vast array of conditions) you end up with a lot of non-symmetrical mechanics. A kluge-fest of detailed systems.

Now for standard Action Cards, our homebrew, I've pretty much stuck with a classic wound level system-- increasingly descriptive terms, but a total of six levels (plus unwounded and dead). [For reference those levels are: Grazed, Hurt, Injured, Cut Up, Bloody Heap, and Death’s Door.] Originally I had rising penalties on those levels, but more recently I decided to only have penalties for the last two levels. In this system, if a player takes a wound greater than their present wound level, they go to that level. If they take a wound of equal or lower value to their present wound level, they go up one degree. The consequence for that is a character, when hit after the first time, is likely to either take nothing or go up one level. So one's first hit of damage essentially tells how many more times the character can be hit.

Systems with a relatively small gradations for wounds present several other implications for game play. First, weapons, armor and the like end up extremely abstract. Generally most weapons and attacks do the same amount of damage-- with some small complications. What changes is a weapon's qualities: ranged, fast, cuts through things, and so on. But even weapons which are defined as bad-ass will do a big punch at the beginning, but damage like any other weapon after that (usually). Second, the system also implies that all characters have the same number of hit points. There might be differentials in wound absorbing abilities (reducing initial damage) but everyone has those six levels. That removes a possible character detail in favor of ease and eveness.

Now my thinking had been to add an additional wound effect to the system. Robin Laws' HeroQuest suggests a possible and easy approach: as characters took damage they would find their abilities/skills penalized. This is fairly abstract in HQ and only occurs after the resolution of a conflict. Depending on the stakes, the losing side has a lingering penalty to their relevant ability. I thought that was an interesting mechanism and one which added emphasis to the having some broader and narrower skills (and issue I talked about not long ago). My thought was that in place of damage going up a step or in addition to it, players might be required to put an X by an ability, showing that they could not use it for a redraw until healed. This, to my mind, represented a funny bone injury or disconcerting wound.

I believed this would have two major effects. First it would add color and meaningful impact to damage in combat. Second, it opened up a new avenue for impact as a GM-- rather than just beating a player to unconsciousness, I could shift the threat a little. I would give me more room as a GM. In practice when I decided to apply this mechanic to running the Star Wars version of Action Cards, I completely forgot about it. I suspect that's because I'm so used to running the system without it. In any case, I don't think that's an adequate test of that mechanic except to show that it isn't particularly compelling.

In the meantime I've also had the experience of playing in Kenny's HALO game using the Action Cards system. He keeps the same wound levels, but he doesn't use my mechanic for escalating damage. Instead those wound levels mean you've essentially got 6 Hit Points. That makes combat deadly and dangerous. It also means he can just dish out damage without reference to the player's present state of injury. That eliminates a step and makes things faster-- and makes them seem more objective.

So I'm thinking that I might want to go with a simple wounds pool. It this version of the system all characters would have ten wounds. That would be it-- not abilities or things to buy that up (probably). Simple to track-- but I've got some additional complications to add to that.

Both HeroQuest 2e and Diaspora have systems where conflict causes damage: but that conflict isn't necessarily physical. In HQ 2, all conflict is equivalent. So a character can be as effectively knocked out or removed from the scene by an attack on their reputation as they can from a punch to the face. Diaspora tracks the issue of “composure” for the players. [Sidebar: I've skimmed Diaspora so I may be grossly mistating the ideas there].

My idea would be that the damage a player takes can come from multiple sources-- weapon strikes, mental assault, social retorts, and so on. All of that damage ends up tracked in that shared pool. You might have players mark physical and non-physical damage in different ways both for results and for healing. But the idea would be that a person could become so mentally shaken that a simple wound could drive them over the edge-- leading to collapse, escape or other resolutions.

But I want to take that one stage further-- in one of my earlier drafts of the rules I played with the idea of players being able to avoid a significant hit (and getting K.O'd) but opting to take a secondary effect instead: for example a wounded leg to reduce movement, a scar on the face, a broken hand, and so on. Diaspora does something like that with the idea of “Tags”- qualities which can get applied to an opponent and then get utilized later on for a mechanical benefit. These tags may be concrete: set on fire or more abstract: broken nerves.

I want to apply something similar-- the idea that when a conflict resolves with damage, physical, social or otherwise, the actors in that conflict can apply tags or (to use the term I've previously used in Action Cards) Qualities. For example, a player who takes a large chuck of physical damage could ask top change some of that damage into a lingering quality: such as Unbalanced, Ringing Ears, Bleeding Hand, and so on. This would help offset that damage, allow the player to continue conscious in the conflict, but also give themselves a colorful on-going penalty. The GM could them act on that quality later in describing results and so on.

Likewise, a player could also convert some damage done into a quality applied to an opponent. In this case, the quality would be used to reduce the opponent's advantage: eliminating superior mobility, keeping them from carrying out a plot and so on. With Witless Minion I suggested a like idea with the Hierarchy of Villainy concept-- that superior opponents would provide a set of initial non-combat challenges in combat. Part of the trick would be figuring out how to reduce an opponent down to one's level or to destroy those special effects granting the villain an advantage.

Now this system actually gets more interesting when you apply it to non-standard combat: social interactions, one-upmanship, rumor-mongering, and so on. In this case, the actors could attempt to apply particular qualities like: trepidatious about confronting, isolated from group, self-doubt, bad reputation, or obligation. Or they could take them on to themselves to avoid being destroyed in such combats. Now this wouldn't mean that any social exchange would cause damage. Raising the stakes to that level would be a risky proposition-- just as pulling a knife out on someone would. People would recognize when a 'social combat' is happening and there would be ramifications if over-used.

Finally, such a damage system could also be used to handle fear, stability and sanity. Taking a quality to represent fears or phobias would be an alternative for players. Most importantly throughout this, the players would have a degree of control over their situation-- be given a choice in how they handle the damage: choose between unconsciousness/death and a piece of problematic character color they have to deal with. This is just first thinking about this, so I have to work out some more specifics but I think it is a decent start.

Threat, Tension, Risk and Damage (Part Two)

More general thinking about these issues-- to be followed eventually by a considering how to apply this to our house rules.

Part One here.

So an interesting thing happened as I started writing and thinking about this. Robin Laws Hamlet's Hit Points arrived in the mail. As often happens, he manages to hit better, more fully and more clearly on a number of points I've been thinking about. The book examines several classic texts (Hamlet, Dr. No and Casablanca) in terms of the kinds of beats and moments by way of comparison to an rpg session. He'd done some of this discussion on his blog before and some of it in his breakdown of the dramatic arcs in Hero Quest 2e. In this version he considers most beats as either providing Hope or Fear. Through that he demonstrates how the alternation of Hope/Fear can sustain a game. I don't think he exactly puts it this way-- but too much focus on Hope provides little tension or connection and too much focus on Fear freezes and depresses us.

I like the idea of breaking down those beats and I do think his analysis can help us see how things play together. But I'd also say, as he does, that the role-playing game doesn't exactly correspond to the narrative structure of these kinds of dramas. Obviously there's the issue of interactivity-- but I don't think that's such a big concern. Players who buy into the genres see these beats and tend to try to create scenes that work within them. I think more importantly, you get a good number of filler beats-- things are tried, experiments are made and plots appear and are dropped. In a tight narrative-- like a film, novel or even video game-- things which don't play into the narrative get cut in editing. The RPG doesn't have that luxury. The best analogy I can think of is a long-running comic book series which moves through a number of creative teams. There plots and characters get raised, dumped, forgotten and retconned at the drop of a hat. Reading some of the retrospective blogs about the awful X-Comics of the late '80's and '90's makes it seem like a bizarre table of changing players with an editor/GM trying to keep some coherency but failing.

One of the things Laws' analysis points to is the difference between a kind of macro-level story tension and a micro-level scene based tension. At the macro-level story level, that balance of Hope/Fear becomes important over time. Depending on the game, the tone and the section of the arc, the balance between those two sides will vary. If a game goes long on the Fear side of things, they need to have the trust of the players. I'll admit that was most of my problem with Cyberpunk and a couple of other darker games I played in. The lack of Hope beats and the feeling that the GM could and would destroy anything we'd built. That distrust came from either not having played with that GM before or from the GM in the past having destroyed what we'd built. I keep that in the back of my mind-- my reaction to that experience. So I won't do that to players-- but I'll threaten to. That threat serves as a Fear beat, but unfortunately I think some players realize I won't go that far. Again a question of the actual push and shove of the GM and player.

On the other hand, the micro-level is about the tension and risk within an individual scene. Generally, we're talking about combat, but it also applies to other tasks-- like defusing a bomb or stopping a runaway vehicle. And in my games it also applies to social situations. In any particular interaction with an NPC the payers want something, but the NPC wants something as well. That's a secondary goal-- having the players suss out what that is. In any case I want to keep my focus on the micro-level-- as this will come around to the question of damage systems in games. Damage being one of the more coherent and concrete methods for measuring risk.

Related to the central point for risk and loss is the question of attachment. In order for there to be a sense or threat or risk, a player has to have an attachment to what is at risk. That makes certain kinds of players bad for more story-oriented games where the players aren't wagering something off of their character sheet. We had a sociopath in the group for a long time. While his problems went past the table into a lack of general empathy for other human beings, it made for really bad situations at the table. He assigned no value to anything beyond himself and so only damage to his character mattered. That was a pathological player, but I've seen other players, sometimes good players, assume stances with the same effect. “They're just NPCs” is an approach which comes out of playing in certain kinds of games. But some people come to that detachment from a paranoid play style. They suspect everyone and everything of being a device on the part of the GM to screw them and so avoid attachments. Or they play an “angry” character who avoids attachment out of disdain or rage. They may state a character goal of overcoming that, but in practical play they will not. These kinds of defensive approaches echo what Graham Walmsley's Play Unsafe and Johnstone's Impro call a “Closed” response. Now both of these character stances: the angry character, the paranoid character can be done well. However when they aren't they usually work as a wedge to protect the player.

I'm not sure how a GM overcomes that. For myself, I like taking damage in combat. It makes me feel involved in the events. One of my favorite combats had be knocked out twice through the course of it. But I've seen a lot of mixed messages about damage and combat in my time running. For example, I had a player who consistently critiqued combat in the games as not providing a sense of risk. He didn't feel threatened. Yet at the same time when that player actually took damage or suffered a loss, he would become sulky, hyper-competitive or angry. That made for a difficult set of choices for me as a GM. Some players read any kind of failure as punishment. And players, quite rightly, don't like punishment. But when players read anything negative as punishing, it becomes a trap for the GM.

I'm not sure what the solution is for that-- I'll come back to that at some point. Honestly it shows one of the virtues of a simulationist approach. One has an agreed upon set of guidelines and restrictions. Actions, decisions, and results can be tracked an accounted for. There's an objectivity to the system which provides players with a sense of fairness. I don't think we should under-estimate that as a virtue. The story-driven, narrativist approach I've come to enjoy has some downfalls-- and one of those is that it can be subjective and certainly will be seen as subjective by simulationist players. I think that's what Burning Wheel tries to get around through its low-detail, low-trust mechanics. I think the trick is to figure out ways as a GM to continue to build that trust and demonstrate that we're on the player's side in some ways-- or at least on the side of the story they want to tell-- providing of course, that they've taken the time to indicate what they want. That's another problem worth dealing with in a different post.

Next time I finally get to damage.

Threat, Tension, Risk and Damage (Part One)

First of some general thinking about these issues-- followed eventually by a consideration of how to apply this to our house rules.

One of the real questions about role-play gaming I wrestle with is how much emphasis falls on the first part of that term and how much on the second. I've certainly moved further towards being a narrative, story-based gamer in recent years-- and away from the simulationist side of things. At the same time, and perhaps in some way an opposite motion, has been a move away from a determinist approach to storytelling-- i.e. I have a story which runs on rails to an incident presentation and improvisation approach. I say an opposite approach because I usually think of a “game” as a balanced and equal set of risks and powers, which isn't true in a rpg. But there's an underlying fairness and freedom to a less scripted approach-- which means I'm spinning off into abstractions.

Let's stick with a concrete consideration: wounding, risk, death and failure.

There's a simulationist theory about gaming which suggests that obstacles and adversaries should be detailed and balanced to the party involved. From there we get concepts like Challenge Ratings and the concept of skill challenges in d20 3/4. But we also get that in more abstract systems such as Mouse Guard (which adapts Burning Wheel) which puts explicit limits on the opposition the GM can put into play. Let me say at the start that I don't subscribe to that theory-- but I understand the impulse that drives that-- both towards fairness and competition between players and GM. But I don't follow that path. At the same time I try not to create undefeatable enemies: in my mind a tough foe must have some weaknesses and it is up to the players to come up with a good story about what those are.

So the question is: in a looser and more narrative based game how do we create tension or risk while not making the players feel unfairly targeted. Related to that, how do we draw that sense of tension/risk across all aspects-- not simply the obvious combat situation. Now I may be wrong, but one of the things I'm constantly worried about as a GM is that the players will feel that they can't fail in such a game or that there aren't consequences. As I've suggested before players don't mind failure, as long as they perceive their attempt has been fairly treated and they've had some power and autonomy in their attempt. But players don't enjoy penalties-- unless they come with significant color to the narrative and are limited to a small number. And when I say penalties, I mean numerical penalties that have to be calculated-- I'll come back to another form of penalties in a bit.

Repeated attempts
There are a couple of system mechanics which can add to the sense of non-threat at the table. One mechanic is the “OK, well that ate up some time...I'll try again” effect. So I fail my lockpicking attempt, and I try again. And again and so on. Bad GMs let this go because they want the players through that door-- the game grinds to a halt otherwise. Better GMs apply the pressure of time and circumstance, implying consequences for those failures. Even better GMs recognize if the moment is dramatically significant. Is there a real dramatic possibility if the players don't get through the door? If so, let the failure stand and move on. If not, then don't have the player make the check in the first place. Gumshoe, of course, applies this to investigative skills as a system element. Hero Wars provides a clear statement on “retries” that I think GMs ought to keep in mind: an attempt represents a player putting their all into it. If they fail, they must find another new and novel approach, usually applying another ability or changing up the circumstance.

Related to the repeated attempts problem is the group roll problem. Often when a task comes up multiple players will have appropriate skills. Having one assist the other is OK, but does do two things: a) puts one of the players into a secondary role and b) depending on the result span of the system and how the aid action works, significantly raise the success rates. That latter point may be realistic in some actions, but often feels inevitable and weak in play. You get the same feeling when a GM has the entire group make a perception roll-- with that many rolls, someone is going to make it-- why bother with the rolling. It becomes a competitive test of dice rolling between the players with no real consequence.

The point is that with any test, the results ought to not feel inevitable-- if they are then move to the result and skip the rolling.

There are exceptions:
a) if the inevitability comes from the players having taken steps to raise their chance of success through stunting, planning, or generally doing things. Let the players make the roll as a capper to their attempts. Keep the chance of success in the back of your mind and if they do fail, make it a significant tragedy or make them pay resources (drama points or otherwise) to reduce it.
b) some players really like to roll. Make sure they get the chance to do that in a session.

OK so if we assume that generate a feeling of risk or threat in a game is a good thing, how can we create mechanics which support that but at the same time don't make it a central focus. Threat/Release/Victory needs to be a cycle, and maintaining a constant threat can wear players down. I'll come back somewhat to that idea in another post on victories.

Threat, of course, means that something is threatened. Most obviously this will be the characters themselves-- either through loss of the character or loss of their abilities. But let's face facts: as a GM I rarely kill player characters. I will kill them if they've walked into the situation themselves without prodding or railroading. And after a couple of warnings that's they've moved off the reservation. But character death is pretty drastic-- and it has been a while since I've had players force my hand like that-- or players who've managed to find a good, dramatic place for that to happen. So the risk and loss is often more about secondary things-- loss of resources, loss of allies, loss of friends, loss of status, and so on.

Part Two Soon