Working Through It
masqueradeball:
In ruminating on how to make Chanbara fiction work in an RPG I came up with the idea that the GM would determine some aspect of the character that would be challenged... their honor, their skill as a swordsman or whatever, and then try and plan a scenario (in advance) that would make as hard as possible for the character not to fail. An important point here is that once the obstacles were planned, they would be totally fixed, so no ad libbing as a GM, which would allow a creative player to circumvent the problems or come up with some creative solution to solve it. Also, each character would be challenged in a different way, so that by pooling their resources they would be able to address challenges that were designed to block only a single character.
Question: Does this sound like it would work? Would a game that has the GM design a scenario thats meant to defeat your character seem to overwhelming or aggressive? What kind of limits would have to be set on the GM to ensure that the challenges were not boringly overwhelming?
CA note: This is not meant to be a gamist design. By thwarting the characters in a specific aspect of themselves, play is suppose to force the characters to grow in order to overcome the challenges that are thrown against them.
Ron Edwards:
Hi Nolan,
I think I get what you're saying, and I think that it will work very well, without intimidation or anything else, as long as the players really do know that the GM cannot change up on them. If the GM comes to the table with X, then the player can try Y, Z, or 7, and it's still always against X. The GM cannot shift X to become "anti-Y," for instance.
The next question becomes, what's the systemic implementation of my "Y" vs. your "X," and your summary makes me very interested in what that might be.
One thing, though, this phrasing ...
Quote
... try and plan a scenario (in advance) that would make as hard as possible for the character not to fail.
... is weird to read. Is it accurate to re-phrase, "... try and plan a scenario (in advance) that is as hard as possible for the hero to succeed"?
Best, Ron
Ar Kayon:
Masqueradeball,
I'm not able to form an opinion yet. Can you give us an example of how this may manifest in-game?
Callan S.:
Hi,
I'm not sure how growing (in terms of character) makes someone overcome anything? Transgressing their own principles, like (for a clumsy example) a vegetarian needing to eat meat to get past an obstacle, that I can see. Do you mean something like that? The only way I can see character growth itself overcome X is if the GM does indeed change X, after sufficient growth has been shown.
masqueradeball:
Ron, yes, your rephrasing means essentially the same thing.
Okay, basically the format that I was thinking of is that the characters would be the best in a certain aspect of pop-culture samurai-dom, so, one character might be the best at sword fighting. When that character is challenged in that skill, the GM would build, for instance, a situation in which the character must fight someone he cannot hope to defeat. The GM would do his best to make sure that the character would not be able to avoid that fight and would try to plan for contingencies so that the character couldn't use any special tactics or abilities to overcome his opponent. Now, all these road blocks the GM is putting in place to guide them towards this losing fight are based on who the character IS at the start of the planning and at the beginning of the session/chapter whatever in which this conflict will occur. Now, for the character to succeed, his player will have to convince the table that the his character has changed significantly in some way, that he has become a better swords man or that he has thrown off the shackles of honor and will do something so dirty that the GM didn't plan for it, etc... I'm trying to think of a good example from fiction, but I'm drawing a blank...
One of the core elements of this "growth" or "change" or whatever you call it would how the character interacts with other characters... so that the ninja might be the one who allows the samurai to break past his code of honor to set a deadly trap for the swords man.
Cleverness would come in in that the players would be looking for constructive ways to overcome the GM's challenge with out needing to "harm" their character. In the above example, the most immediate resolution (can't really call it a solution) would be to lose the fight and try not to killed, taking any consequent injuries and loss of face, while taking the aid of the ninja would make the character less honorable which might make them more vulnerable to temptation, etc... but it would perfectly within the players rights, and would actually be awarded in a sense, for the player to think of a way to use his character's existing abilities/state of being to overcome the challenge.
Does that make sense?
Callan, I'm not sure if that answered your question. It might just be semantics... I would see the samurai changes his code of honor as a form of "growth" others might call it a transgression, either way, the point would be too see characters change in play in ways that would hopefully challenge the players to think about the consequences of those changes in a meaningful way.
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