Working Through It
dindenver:
Nolan,
I think this idea has merit.
The only thing that concerns me is what resources does the GM have to set these obstacles? I mean, theoretically, if they have an unlimited authority to create these encounters, then they could come up with a situation that has no resolution. Imagine that the challenge is for a master duelist. So, the GM creates a group of ronin that each has a sword talent equal to the duelist, but they specialize in group tactics. Further, the encounter is an ambush in an alley with half of the ronin blocking off each end of the alley. And what the ronin really want is to avenge their fallen master.
So, the PC can't talk their way out, they can't sneak out, the can't fight out, they can't bribe their way out and they can't bring back the ronin's master.
There may be a way out of this that I am not seeing, but it seems pretty water tight to me. The point of the example though is that without some kind of currency to balance the encounter, the GM may paint themselves into a corner.
Or, do you have a plan for this and I am jumping the gun?
Also, I had an idea for a chambara-style game as well. One were each move required the escalation of the stakes (the idea being, that is why some samurai back off from a stare-down, they can't handle the escalated stakes), but it is still in a very rough form of an idea...
Good luck with your game, I am eager to see more!
Ar Kayon:
I love this idea. It appears as if the game is inherent in the role-playing, not the numbers. And the fact that you'll lose unless you make for a fantastic drama makes it all the more interesting.
Callan S.:
Nolan,
"ALL IS TRANSGRESSION!", screams a stark figure on the summit of a charred hill, bloody sword held aloft to a black, indifferent sky.
Ahem. Growth/transgression, potatoe, potatoh. :)
With what you describe, it makes sense to me in that it's not what physical actions the samurai is doing, it's instead the way of living he lived before, and how he changes that way of living when it just cannot physically intermesh with the current circumstance. Actually I should say IF he changes - what's dreadfully interesting (atleast to me) is a character who would rather die than change. I think that's valid and would be a "Whoa, cool!" moment if it happened at the table. Or if they change, it's cool!
I don't know if it's too soon to get to Daves question, as right now you might be mulling over the in the moment potential and enjoying riffing off that. But looking to the larger picture, if you wish to - sometimes a character is so interesting that if he dies in five minutes, it seems to be missing out on so much character development. That's not to say a design can't just do that, but I think it's a choice of the designer whether a character can die at any old time, or if there is some mechanism (like say fate points) to extend the examination of character. Neither is a better or worse option in some objective sense. But you do have to choose, I think.
But anyway, going back to the way of life before, I don't think this is just about blocking a really good swordsman. Being a really good swordsman is 'way of life' neutral - a saint or a mass butchering barbarian could both be really good swordsmen. Despite the number of roleplay books that have emphasised massive skill lists, skill has nothing to do with character, as far as I measure it.
Now, inclination to use a sword to solve all your problems? That's different. But that's not about skill. It's more like a way of life, or whatever you might like to call it.
I don't think it's just about blocking an ability. Indeed I had a friend who said as GM he wanted to block player abilities to see what they do and I said, where's the play in that? It's blocked. That's it.
I think it's about targeting a characters way of life, and blocking that. Then seeing how he will change his ways, perhaps ways he's held dear for years. Or perhaps he will stick to his ways to the death. He'd rather die than let the universe change him. Cool stuff.
masqueradeball:
Yes Callan, your 100% right about the way of life point... if the samurai's wasn't compelled by his whole world view to use his sword and win, then losing a sword fight, or being a bad swords man, has no drama to it. The only abilities that would be threatened would be those that are tied to some perceived value in the character or that could be used to protect or undermine those values. Challenging a characters abilities in this way is meant to be a challenge of their responses, how they usually do things.
Dindenver,
This has been, to me, the biggest single problem with GM designed scenarios there is. If the GM is not constrained some how in how much force he can use against the player characters than it just seems... unfair. I want this to be a GM-full game, but I want to challenge the traditional notions of GM supremacy. I imagine that the GM would have some kind of point pool to draw from with which to build obstacles, and like Ron said, these would be 100% fixed or close to 100% fixed once the actual play began, and deviating from the pre-prepped situation would be, in effect cheating.
As far as force-point type mechanics, I like the idea of these existing for both the GM and the players, but I wouldn't want them to work in a traditional manner. In the past I thought the best way to implement this type of mechanic would be to have a pre-listed set of "random" genre appropriate occurrences that any one at the table could spend points to invoke. This way both the GM and the rest of the players can do something when they see no good solution the situation at hand.
So, going off your ronin in an ally death trap, the samurai player could spend a fate point or whatever, draw a card and maybe a wandering monk would show up or a natural disaster would rock the city. These kinds of events happen all the time in certain forms of fiction and I think they would be fun as long as the resource was rare enough that the craziness wouldn't take all the oomph out of the drama that play is directed towards. My big problem here is handing authority to these plot elements to any player who has a significant stake in the action at hand. If the monk is controlled by the GM he either has to play against himself (use the monk to help the samurai) or try and make any random element work against the samurai. If the samurai is the one controlling it, then the fate points loose some of their uniqueness and become JUST another player resource. The ideal option would be to have the most disinterested player dictate what the random element does or does not do, with mechanics attached so that his inserted influence wouldn't overpower the influence of the players involved, but in free-formy group play that idea that there will be someone at the table who doesn't care is problematic at best.
Callan S.:
? Atleast in how I mentioned fate points, it's not a player resource, it's simply an excuse to say 'Hey, you would have died, BUT...(and this can only happen X times)'. You can't fire a fate point early to get out of one of these situations. Only when either you've changed the way you live or have stuck to your guns and are about to die, does the fate point kick in. They are just there so we can torture examine a character for a longer period of time than normal 'causality' would let us. I don't think they just become another player resource, unless you really have drifted right over into gamism town. If your not trying to sneak up on mode, that shouldn't be a problem. But maybe you mean something else by fate points?
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