[Rustbelt] Changing setting
DWeird:
I haven't read that particular post, no. Thought I was aware of most bits of stuff there - at least, I think so. One thing caught my eye, though...
Quote
DICE DON'T RESOLVE CONFLICTS, PEOPLE DO
(But the dice help.) In fights, the dice tell us who gets hurt, but the fight ends when somebody decides to stay down, and the other guy decides to stop kicking him. In social conflicts, I can make you like me by rolling Personable, I can make you afraid of me by rolling Grizzled, I can freak you the fuck out by rolling Uncanny, I can confuse you by rolling Savvy, but I can't force you to take any particular course of action. All I can do is make certain actions harder for you to take, in the hopes that you'll acquiesce to my will. And I can offer bargains, I can beg, I can threaten, I can make promises, I can lie, but you always have authority over your own decisions.
When it comes to bargaining, the GM is always in a position of unmitigated power (the players can always say "screw you!" and leave, but that's not much game-wise) - he is never in a condition of scarcity, and can conjure the resources that are lacking for players out of thin air. My major worry is that I can inadvertedly crush the players - I mean, the game's designed to do that, but there's... good crushing and bad crushing.
Like... Remember Konrad the truck driver and how his arms were mess'd up? The character was essentially out of the game after that, and eventually resorted to random face-stomping violence just to have some impact on the game. The GM started thinking on how to allow him back in, but before there was a chance to do so, the game mostly ended (and Rustbelt games aren't designed to be played for extended periods of time, anyway). Now, I wasn't there, so my reading of the events could be wrong, but if it's correct, that's a horrible thing to happen. To a player, not a character, mind.
I guess the better question to ask is not whether Rustbelt can support the sort of play I envisioned, but rather how? What's the proper pace and intensity for challenges? The fiction of my setting demands that relativelly small offenses lead to disproportionally large threats. I don't want to kill my player's characters on first issue they face, but that's easy enough to avoid. More importantly, I don't want to take away too many options too soon, as it (probably?) makes every challenge a choice between ignoring it and giving your life ('cause you haven't got much left 'sides that) to overcome it. "You are an armless, legless torso. You are trying to eat a bowl of cereal. I'll let you pour in milk if you lose your lower jaw in the process." or something similar (but probably less amusing to read).
Now, I just reread the GM section, again, and I guess there's a gaping flaw in everything I'm doing now: pre-designing a setting and challenges before I know what characters I'm going to run the game with. Reminding myself of that felt reassuring for some reason - I don't have to make everything make sense, I just have to push the right buttons at the right time. Or SLAM! them all at once continuously, whichever works. Still, even with this in mind, I feel that there's still an issue here. Right now, my setting's painted with a broom - broad strokes, no details and no clear pre-planning in any meaningful sense, but there's still a certain feel I want to bring to the game. "One wrong step and everything falls apart", rather than "push 'till you can't push no more." Like I said before... Not a "whether", but a "how" question. How should I structure the challenges, their frequency and intensity, to achieve the sort of feel that I'm looking for?
[Completelly irrelevant side note: funny thing about my proposed Woe mechanic: It gives a bonus exactly equal to the Tears damage one just took, meaning that it's mechanically equivalent (-x+x=0) to a possible raw Push mechanic just before invoking the Woe. I am in awe of my own brilliance, really. :D]
Marshall Burns:
Quote from: DWeird on November 06, 2008, 02:58:06 AM
When it comes to bargaining, the GM is always in a position of unmitigated power (the players can always say "screw you!" and leave, but that's not much game-wise) - he is never in a condition of scarcity, and can conjure the resources that are lacking for players out of thin air. My major worry is that I can inadvertedly crush the players - I mean, the game's designed to do that, but there's... good crushing and bad crushing.
That can be an issue. The idea is for the GM to push hard enough to make the PCs reveal through action all of their most admirable and most monstrous qualities. If that means crushing them, then so be it. But the thought of crushing them before they get to do their piece is scary. I've held myself back from more than a few things because I didn't want to take it overboard. Looking back, those things wouldn't have gone too far, and I'm really not sure if it actually is possible to take it too far, but it's still scary.
Here's a thing I've been thinking about: forget Blood/Sweat/Tears for NPCs. If they take Tears damage, it must be channeled into an Outburst immediately. Combat damage must be interpreted as death, Injury, or the destruction of equipment. I haven't tested this yet, but I think it will nicely obviate the problem of unbalanced resources between GM and players. The Rust, of course, never Pushes, so it's not much of a problem.
Quote from: DWeird on November 06, 2008, 02:58:06 AM
but there's still a certain feel I want to bring to the game. "One wrong step and everything falls apart", rather than "push 'till you can't push no more." Like I said before... Not a "whether", but a "how" question. How should I structure the challenges, their frequency and intensity, to achieve the sort of feel that I'm looking for?
Let things fall apart when they take a wrong step, and leave it up to them to find a way out of the rubble. It's worth a try, at any rate.
DWeird:
Quote from: Marshall Burns on November 06, 2008, 03:41:21 PM
Here's a thing I've been thinking about: forget Blood/Sweat/Tears for NPCs.
...that doesn't feel right at all. As a GM, I can still create a hundred NPCs on the spot need be (perfectly within the bounds of fiction in my case, mind!), and I can also set up non-NPC challenges - anything from the circumstance-based "they're coming for you and the door is locked!" to the looky-a monster! types of "there is policeman in a tattered uniform, waving a bloodied stop sign around."
B/S/T for NPCs is a way of giving a little oomph or maybe staying power to the NPCs the GM likes (I'm assuming the "only use B/S/T for NPCs with developed Psyche components" rule still stands in this scenario). Which I sort of like - the GM's increased responsibility in regards to the game shouldn't mean that he's not getting somethin' from it in return. An ability to let some of "your" guys to kick ass in a way that mirrors the players' respective ability means that you get to get some non-guilty pleasures.
Taking away the GM's pocket knife still leaves him with a pair of scissors, a chainsaw, a stack of grenades, and an AA gun. And if you take those way, too, how the heck are we supposed to torture the characters?
I'm now pretty sure this problem is in the "GM best practises" pile, not the "core rules need work" pile. I mean, it probably would have to be part of the rules if the relationship between the "GM/world" and "players/characters" was genuinely adverserial, but it's not - not because the two are best buddies, but, well... because, in this game, the characters have already lost. The only things up for grabs are the answers to "when" and "how". Which is still a damned lot, if you want me to get all philosophical - but trust me, you don't... T'is a slippery slope.
[That little bit of fatalism is probably a way in which your game is not american at all... Not the same way applie pie is, at the very least.]
Could you maybe talk more about those times you felt you could have crushed the characters if things went out of hand and then later thought that wouldn't have been a problem? Were there ever any moments where you experienced the opposite - when you threw something at the players and they failed to deal with it in an interesting way? When is it the best time, from your experience, to start throwing insurmountable obstacles at them? Straight off? Let the character wiggle into it themselves, little by little, and then make like a beartrap and snap?
Also! If I'm going to throw the characters in the grind, the players should be aware of both
the fact itself and the available means of resistance. Is there any catchy one-liner I can give them that would help them snap into the right mindset for the game?
This seems to have migrated a bit from "how do the rules influence the setting?" to "Marshall, help me with my game!" sort of things, so I'm sorry. But there's nothing more annoying than a person who pesters you for help and keeps apologising for it, so I'll just say... Thanks. :D 'ppreciate the help.
Marshall Burns:
Well, I'm not married to the idea; it's just an idea, and this ain't quite a finished game, after all!
It's just intended to make the GM feel safer about what he's doing. It's just a trick, really. Which may not even be necessary.
For a while, I felt bad everytime an NPC pulled a gun. As soon as the gun came out, I thought, "My God! What am I doing? I'm gonna kill the PCs before they have a chance to do anything!" Which was dead, dead wrong. It wasn't until one of my players hacked a gun-toting PC to death with a machete that I realized just how easily a powerful NPC could be surmounted. (It also made me realize how important little details could be in a fight -- the player utilized the terrain, which was the interior of a rapidly flooding cave, to pin the NPC in a bad spot)
In a later game, I had an NPC guarding a warehouse go all-out with an Uzi. Player's guy lost a damn kneecap, but still won. With a cinderblock.
Meanwhile, another guy is inside the warehouse, going to fuckin' town on three NPCs who had pistols and a shotgun, smashing them with crates and knocking them off of catwalks onto the tines of forklifts.
Quote from: DWeird on November 07, 2008, 07:58:34 AM
Also! If I'm going to throw the characters in the grind, the players should be aware of both
the fact itself and the available means of resistance. Is there any catchy one-liner I can give them that would help them snap into the right mindset for the game?
Hm. That's a tough one. I'm gonna have to think about that.
One thing I've found recently to make things click for people is that it's like the movie No Country for Old Men, except everything is more worn-down and rusted out. That's the most Rustbelt-ish movie I've ever seen. (If it were a Rustbelt game, Llewellyn, Anton, and Sheriff Root would be the PCs). But it's also a very American movie, so I don't know how helpful that would be with your setting.
DWeird:
Haven't really seen that movie - will try to make time for it, though. However! After having rummaged about, I've unearthed one quote...
"How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?"
That is the question my setting is asking. It's the definition, the freaking essence of it! The crushing, the grind... It's there for a reason. And the reason is that someone... something... wants to find out how people respond to being crushed and grinded.
I might be taking that quote out of context, but I don't care - I feel like I can now pop out captivating NPCs at will. That question... Isn't verbal. It's not something you ask someone - it's something you find out. It's - it's about trying to find out the meaning of life with a scalpel. There's method and rigor... And there's boredom, apathy - all the answers are meaningless, answers are made meaningless by the question itself. And then there's fear - not of guns, or tanks, or pain, but of being asked that question... So you kill everything in advance, just to screw that question over, to flip it on it's head. You kill yourself so you could live. Which is laughable. ...all of which is horrible.
This... is something. My head keeps bubbling with little wows that pop when they hit the skull. Then there's also this part of me that's afraid that this sort of stuff gets me excited.
...all I need is to know the characters, that question, and I can run a game. Wow!
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