[Solar System Actual Play] Characters Grow by Trial and Error
Paul T:
Thank you for the replies.
What about NPC Pools? The advice in the SS booklet looked good, but in play it seemed like it made the NPCs too strong. For instance, having 3 Pool as the "low end" placed an NPC on par with a PC (since, with 10 points, that gives you 3 in the typical PC's Pool), except that the PC often began the conflict with their Pool already depleted. Having NPCs with Pools in the 7-10 range seemed like they would totally overpower PCs, especially with the "Pools exhausted + tie = knocked out" clause.
I went with Clinton's suggestion of half-size Pools, and it worked out OK (giving a typical range of 1-3 for an NPC's Pool).
Eero, how do you work with those Pool sizes in your games?
Eero Tuovinen:
I suspect that you have more NPCs in your conflicts than I do, actually. It's pretty typical in my games for one NPC to have to face 2-3 player characters, which would account for the need to have more resources. This goes with the aforementioned idea that I try to have only one character represent one angle in the conflict.
Another factor is that PCs can buy more Pool and stuff with experience, so if they do get knocked about a bit at the beginning, that'll start to change soon enough when they get some force multipliers into play. Perhaps the most important part, though, is the fact that NPCs only rarely use Effects, while players tend to have some floating about. Gift dice as well, and they can roll Abilities in support. All of this means that spending Pool is sort of a last resort for player characters who want bonus dice, while NPCs are expending theirs readily. Then there is the fact that nothing prevents players from switching Pools and using them all - in fact, most characters should switch to a different Pool when they run out of one.
Finally, remember that a high Pool is only as powerful as the character's Ability rank indicates, really. As a rule of thumb, an Experienced (2) NPC will make for a formidable opponent to start-up player characters as long as his Pools last, while a Master (3) will win them unless he runs out of Pool points. If you create Master or Grandmaster (4) NPCs and give them high Pools, you're basically running the most powerful NPCs you have available in the game, ever. Note also the way I use to determine the Pool size of a NPC - it does not correlate with the power of the character in the setting at all, unlike the character's rank: the sole determinant is how much narrative complexity and interest the NPC has developed. This should in principle mean that only NPCs worthy of respect have the high Pools necessary for dominating extended conflicts, and even then they won't do it if they're weak.
All that being said, this NPC thing is very much a matter of finding out what works for your group. If you want weaker NPCs, then give them smaller Pools. I've found that my NPCs are annoyingly easy to push over if they don't have several Pool points to throw into bad dice rolls, but tastes surely do vary, and Story Guiding is a craft, not a science.
Paul T:
Eero,
That makes sense. I only had two PCs, and they had pretty different goals in the game, so they never engaged in a BDtP together. Pretty much all the conflicts were 1-on-1, a PC and an NPC. Almost all the NPCs were Unskilled, Competent, or Adept (though there was on Master-level NPC).
It sounds like part of it is the players getting smarter about rolling Abilities into each other and otherwise leveraging the rules. Part of the problem was that they had each established a couple of Effects, but none were relevant to the major conflicts that developed, so, instead of going into conflict better prepared than the NPCs, they were entering conflicts with their Pools largely already tied up or spent.
So, PCs tended to have Competent or Adept Abilities, as did the NPCs, but the NPCs, with Pools of 2 or 3, had more bonus dice to draw on than the exhausted PCs!
We'll see if that dynamic changes in longer-term play! I know a large part of it was a stroke of bad luck on the players' part. One player (Arthur) pretty much rolled a (-) on the dice every time he spent Pool for a bonus die. Poor fellow.
Anyway, your description of how it works for you makes sense to me. More experimentation will have to follow!
Thanks.
Paul T:
Oh, yeah:
The extended action scene I described consisted of one long, drawn-out BDtP for one PC (which was a close call, and, I think, very satisfying dramatically, with several interesting changes of intent in the middle). For the other PC, however, there was one roll which, having failed, went into BDtP, and then another basic conflict, and then a second BDtP. That was when I just gave on the NPC side, not wanting to draw things out more. It worked well dramatically, but I didn't like that it came down to a sort of GM fiat in the end: had I kept rolling for the NPCs, they almost surely would have won. As I said, they were merely Competent, with no Pool points, but the PC was severely Harmed (and therefore suffering penalty dice) and out of Pool points and advances.
Does this sort of thing come up often in your games? I didn't really like that feeling, where giving in the conflict felt more like an old-school Illusionist technique than some kind of reasonable choice on the level of the fiction.
Eero Tuovinen:
The way I deal with that sort of thing is to put the onus on the player:
"OK, another round - damn, I'm bored! BOOOREEEDDD... Can't you give already, you're going to lose anyway!"
In other words: getting bored is a social problem, not a creative choice. And social problems should be dealt with together. It's not your responsibility to end the conflict by giving up any more than it is the player's. Of course sometimes the player thinks that he can win or thinks that the conflict is really interesting and enjoys having his character ground down, but then you just need to find ways to amuse yourself. Get all tragid and grim and describe how the character's bones break as he loses, loses, loses consistently.
This all of course presumes that you can handle the player losing in the conflict; if losing the conflict would just be stupid, then it shouldn't be happening in the first place. Also remember that instead of giving up yourself you can renegotiate the stakes. When we had the long conflict last weekend and it became obvious that the parties were well-matched, I changed goals and opted to imprison one player character instead of sinking the ship they all were on. All but one of the other characters happily left the unfortunate soul to his fate, which meant that I could finish the conflict definitely with a few moves.
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