AMMF?
Filip Luszczyk:
Quote
In practice, I insisted as the GM to keep some honest "yes you can fail" challenge in the game, but over time that became mostly talk.
This sort of mirrors my experiences with running Exalted, I think. Looking from the perspective of a few years, despite all the talk about optimizing character builds, combat tactics and stuff, in the end we've always had this "nobody fails" assumption that everybody knew about, but nobody acknowledged openly. The contradiction might have been one of the main sources of my growing dissatisfaction with running the game back then.
How to fulfill those goals without the whole bullshit?
First of all, I think that in order for the game to be interesting you need to have some big red question marks hanging over the table, the system directing play towards answering those questions. With a gamist agenda, you'd have the question marks hanging over winning, or at least proving oneself. However, this means failure would have to be included as a real possibility in the system.
So, you know that the characters can't fail. At most, they can experience some setbacks, but only from cool and badass opponents. There is no option of actual failure, though - because if there is such a possibility in the system, it will be overruled by the need to smack all the adversity down and get the girl at the end of the day.
So, the system might just as well make it all a given. Now, what should be placed under those big red question marks instead?
I think that once you figure it out, you have your game.
Some possible options for this sort of a system:
1). You get the girl, but which girl? As the game goes, the system helps you gradually determine what the girl is like.
2). You will take whatever you want. Most of it by force, some of it by other means. So, the question is only "How?" The system is all about which of the means available to you will be used to get each of the things you want, and in what order. All about diversification and pacing, in other words. Maybe as you go, you build a suite of options, both combat and other, and expend them, or something like that.
3). Stuff in your way gets smacked hard. But how hard? Can your next smackdown be more effective than your last one, or than that of other players?
4). A certain amount of setbacks is certain. However, the system helps you determine what sort of opponent is actually cool and badass enough to be worth causing them. Are you, as a player, willing to suffer the obligatory setback from this guy, or should we just cross him off the list and move on to the next one?
Ron Edwards:
Hi John,
Barbaren is your game. I dunno what else to say. I mean, it's got everything you're talking about with enough humor and enough real effort, and some really interesting but not de-macho-ing ways to fail, to make it worth doing.
This is the Actual Play forum, and I'd really like to see some input from you about what systems you've used and what's happened when you played. I mean, you've been pretty clear about why, but not so much on how.
Best, Ron
greyorm:
One observation: we know that in the movies (or the books) the hero always wins. End of story. We KNOW it. And we ignore it throughout the whole movie (or book). Because while we don't wonder about whether he will win, only how. The "how" is what we watch the movie for.
Conan, and I'm talking classic Howardian Conan not the derided 14-year old claimed masturbatory fantasy, is the best example I can think of for this in literature. We KNOW Conan wins. We KNOW he survives. This is a flat-out given. There's never any doubt. He has setbacks and obstacles, but his life is never in any "real" danger from our standpoint. We know he lives a long life and becomes King of Aquilonia.
Why we deride the idea that such fore-knowledge somehow invalidates the experience is beyond me: did you ever feel invalidated by knowing Howard's Conan lives? If you're like most, probably not. So ask yourself what makes these stories so gripping, and how do you build a game around that? Importantly, CAN you build a game around that?
Ron Edwards:
Hi Raven,
I have two points to make about that.
The trouble with using that concept is that the begin-end of role-playing sessions doesn't necessarily map to the begin-end of published stories. Conan gets his ass kicked and his armies defeated pretty frequently, and in that moment and at that time, the loss has to be real. It's a genuine reduction of power or presence for the character.
In role-playing, such things may be experienced as the end of a session, or perhaps worse (from the perspective of John's description), as the necessary set-up for some other prepared situation. I'm thinking of The Scarlet Citadel, in which the story begins with the end of a battle in which Conan is defeated both militarily and personally (yes, in single combat, our Cimmerian gets his ass handed to him). I can just hear the howls of protest if the GM landed the character in that situation to begin with, or if he ran the battle for five hours of play in order to decree that ending by fiat at the end.
Also, and I think this is especially important, he doesn't overcome the problem simply by hammering it harder in the next part of the story. He has to do something different, which in experiential game-terms, means (the character and the reader) accepting that he was defeated the first time.
In my role-playing experience, people who are committed to the idealized/mutated Conan + Wolverine goal have a terrible time with this. The character is the best. Always. So how can he be forced to "go around" a problem? No way! Coming out on top at the end is not good enough. He has to be depicted and experienced exactly as Conan is at the end of The Scarlet Citadel, all the time.
I think this discussion has reached its limits without actual play to provide context for us. Raven and I are now comparing our own experiences, or worse, generalizations based on our separate experiences, and our ability to critique the ideas is diminishing fast. John, we need you to explain what play of this sort is like for you and your fellow role-players, using what system, and how well it works.
Best, Ron
John Adams:
What is it like? Frustrating, both for the GM and players. Works? Just well enough to get your hope up before a bad rool of the dice or a decision by another player or (more often) the GM blows a big hole in your bad-ass image.
We've seen this in AD&D (1st and 2nd ed) and several versions of my Fantasy Heartbreaker. For reference, the latest version was FatE Task Resolution with Level Up and a shallow, linear power curve. Heavy GM authority and Black Box.
It's hard to think of an example where this worked really well. Here's a tiny snip that's close. Andy's warrior recently found a magic spear that caused stun and extra electrical damage on a critical hit. During an important battle he rolled 3 crits in a row. Not only are his immediate foes flying through the air into smoking heaps, every enemy nearby breaks and runs in terror which turns the tide of battle. Bad Ass, Andy at least is happy with that even though it was pure luck.
Here's a good example of when it didn't work. Tusk's background mentioned a battle with his master in which he crippled his master's sword arm. Tusk then had to set out on his own. Much later we have a climactic, one-on-one throwdown with the same master. They are beating the tar out of each other when Tusk lands a crippling blow on his master's arm. I decided to apply the rules as written and called for a 50-50 roll to see which arm. (suck rules, but that's not the point here) Naturally Tusk hits the already crippled arm, the fight continues and Tusk loses. Major bummer. All of the players called me to task on that. It would have been SUCH a cool ending if Tusk crippled the guy's other arm, why not ignore the rules and let it go? Alas, I was never focused only on the bad-assery. I always tried to juggle story, challenge and keeping a sensible, consistant world and as such I met those goals very inconsistantly.
For clear example of what it would look like if it worked, I need to turn to film. In "Conan the Barbarian" the big guy suffers a major setback when his enemy hits him on head with a hammer the size of a Volkswagon. Conan is stunned and his nemesis gloats for a while before crucifying Conan on the Tree of Woe. When a vulture lands on Conan to pick at his near-dead flesh, what does he do? He BITES ITS FUCKING HEAD OFF! Bad. Ass. I can easily picture one of my players annoucing something just like that.
But that attitude is limiting. My players NEVER retreat, it's victory or death. Important NPCs are impossible, my players treat the Emporer of Mankind like some guy they met in a bar: "he had better treat me with respect or I'll kill him." I think the right system and some clear expectations could solve that, but it would be tricky.
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