Looking for suggestions on "against the odds" style game
Shimera9:
Quote from: David Berg on November 26, 2011, 01:16:55 AM
Hmm. That doesn't seem to me like it would feel like a desperate struggle against the odds. It seems like it would feel like a strategic grinding down of a reactive opponent. I guess it depends on how much risk there is of the strategy not working out, and also the costs.
I was aiming for a certain "seek out their weak points" approach. It's also a common genre convention for the first plan to fail. I'll need to consider if I want to add a "secret weakness" mechanic or maybe just a way to throw more complications at the players on a failure. That being said, there is some precendence for trying two challenges in rapid order, such as the heroes talking down a villain after being beat down in combat. This will take a bit more mulling over.
Quote from: David Berg on November 26, 2011, 01:16:55 AM
Yeah, I think some sort of consequence is crucial. In addition to "you can't just try again", I'd want something to make sure the loss felt like a loss to the heroes.
The thing is the challenge mechanics apply to small things like picking a lock as well as to climactic battles. Having the character's home destroyed for failing to climb a wall seems a bit drastic and is likely to dull the edge of those big stakes.
That being said, I am setting rewards for a challenge to be roughly equal to chance of failure * cost of failure. So big risks yield big rewards. If the players want to do something big they have to either ante up something valuable or be ready to slowly build up through smaller challenges.
I may want to make anteing up big stakes neccesary to progress, but I want to limit how often I force that. As I said, if that's overplayed it may lose it's edge.
Quote from: David Berg on November 26, 2011, 01:16:55 AM
As for the rewards, I like your line of thinking. I think it'd be especially cool if those achievements could be measured via fictional outcomes rather than just through votes or fanmail. Like, "prove you really hate this villain by spending your resources against them rather than some other equally valid expenditure". But that may just be my personal taste.
I'll have to see how that works out as the rest of the mechanics evolve, but it should be possible to track where the players are focusing their time and resources. Heck, players investigating a villains weakness is another sign of their interest.
David Berg:
Do you want the players to feel like the odds are against them? Or are you cool with them simply portraying characters who see the odds against them, while the players see a path to victory?
My misgivings pertain only to the former.
If you're after the latter, I think you're in good shape! The main thing I'm missing is color. What's going on in the fiction to make the Hero feel like they're up against impossible odds? If you already described how this is determined, and gave examples, then my bad, I must have missed it.
Shimera9:
First, I'd like to say thanks for the responses. I've set up a couple posts that flesh out the player incentives I talked about earlier.
Drive encourages heroic player to flesh out characters and tie them to setting by letting those character shift the odds in their favor.Notoriety encourages nemesis players to make tough obstacles which hit the heroes on a personal level by letting them mitigate the heroes victory narration when those obstacles are defeated.This should create an interesting back and forth where heroes build up power over time, but taking too long can let the nemesis side sour their eventual victory.
Second, I've been thinking over the "against the odds" theme and how the game's been shaping up. What I'm actually aiming for involves a shifting balance of power.
At the start of the adventure, the odds actually are against the heroic side. The nemesis side is fully capable of making obstacles that are extremely difficult for the heroes to overcome. However, as play progresses the heroes will build up Drive and find ways to counter obstacles and enemy strong points. At the same time, the nemesis side will start running low on the resources that power up their obstacles. By the end of the adventure, the heroes should be looking at a far more even battle. In fact, the heroes may even have favorable odds if they've built up a good supply of Drive.
In short, "against the odds" isn't meant to be a constant theme. Instead, it's part of the larger theme that heroes are those willing to face things that are beyond their ability to handle, but that in facing those things the heroes can grow to rival and even overcome those threats. That feeling of growth and progress is a significant part of what I'm shooting for.
David Berg:
Cool. So, let's say I'm playing the Hero, and it's early in the game. A Nemesis player points to their big ol' threat pool and throws an Obstacle at me. (That's how it works, right? I'm trying to do something -- a heroic quest? just live my life? -- and then an Obstacle comes and interposes itself, right? As opposed to me going out and finding the Obstacle because it's my Mission or something?) Let's say the Obstacle is a ninja who will fight me to the death.
So now my big choice is how many of my own resources to spend in pursuit of victory. That choice will depend on the odds and outcomes of winning, losing without spending, and losing with spending. So, outcomes:
I think I understand what happens when I win.
What happens if I give up, spend no resources, and allow the ninja to defeat my character? The ninja gains Notoriety, which is cool, and bad news for my character's future happiness! Does anything else happen? (Example: Does my character simply take a beating and escape? If so, does that beating matter going forward?)
What happens if I spend all my resources, but the Nemesis spends more, so I get tapped out, and am defeated that way? Does that produce different outcomes than if I spent nothing?
What if I spend some of my resources, then give up before I'm tapped out?
Shimera9:
Quote from: David Berg on November 29, 2011, 07:34:20 PM
(That's how it works, right? I'm trying to do something -- a heroic quest? just live my life? -- and then an Obstacle comes and interposes itself, right? As opposed to me going out and finding the Obstacle because it's my Mission or something?)
Actually, the game is set to the heroes starting with a reason and desire to overcome a larger problem. Obstacles are primarily a pacing mechanic to keep them from jumping straight to the final conflict too soon.
That's not to say the character can't start of just living their lives, but you need to establish why they're involved in the main conflict. Otherwise they're bystanders or supporting characters, not heroes. For the first hero, this means their motives should be established in the first scene.
Quote from: David Berg on November 29, 2011, 07:34:20 PM
What happens if I give up, spend no resources, and allow the ninja to defeat my character? The ninja gains Notoriety, which is cool, and bad news for my character's future happiness! Does anything else happen? (Example: Does my character simply take a beating and escape? If so, does that beating matter going forward?)
What happens depends on how much the player was willing to risk. The pay off for any challenge is tied to how much each side risks and how likely failure is. I'm still working on how risks are set, but it will probably come down to the active chracter / initiator setting the risk.
In this case, that means what happens is determined by the ninja. At this stage is the game, permanently taking the hero out of play is of the table (tough removing non-heroic characters is a possibility). I'm still working out the list of possible nemesis awards. Off the top of my head that could include forcing characters into a new scene (possibly one of their choosing), inflicting wounds, adding complications, locking traits, and removing or transforming unprotected setting elements.
However, it's worth noting that the chance of success won't reach 100%. Since reward scales with chance of failure, that means a highly skilled ninja (low chance of failure) will need to set their own personal risks pretty high to have a big impact. That also means if the character is shooting for a big impact on a win, they'll hand the hero a very sizable reward if the hero pulls off a lucky win.
Quote from: David Berg on November 29, 2011, 07:34:20 PM
What happens if I spend all my resources, but the Nemesis spends more, so I get tapped out, and am defeated that way? Does that produce different outcomes than if I spent nothing?
Not at present. I'll mull it over some more. The thing is Drive is meant to be largely saved up for the final confrontation. Making it renew on failure would encourage more use early game. That's a possible option, but it might dull it's impact if it's used all the time. That being said, I might let Drive be applied after the roll, so it's never actually wasted. The problem there is that makes accumulating enough Drive an effective auto-win.
I think there's some confusion here over Drive's role. It's not meant to carry you through all or even most challenges. Most of the time it will work out more like this:Heroes try to progress toward the final confrontation.Nemesis players introduce obstacles. The difficulty of overcoming the obstacle is set by how much threat is spent.Heroes bring previous awards into play either gain an advantage or counter the obstacles advantages.On success, heroes defeat obstacle and may gain award that helps with future challenges.On failure, the heroes fall back and need to either look for an approach where the obstacles strengths don't come into play, or they need to hunt down more rewards to bolster their chances on a rematch.
This does mean the nemesis side can play aggressively and try blocking the heroes at every turn. However, if hey do so they will run out of threat sooner. At that point the heroes the heroes are free to hunt down easy challenges and start running over already established and fully known threats.
Quote from: David Berg on November 29, 2011, 07:34:20 PM
What if I spend some of my resources, then give up before I'm tapped out?
Same as the previous scenario. Drive is relatively slow building, so you probably want to save it up for high stakes events rather than spending bit of it in every challenge.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page