Towards a More Flexible Sword of Damocles

[Shreyas Sampat]

The Sword of Damocles, as depicted by contracycle, is a fairly exciting move toward highly abstracted but tactical conflict systems, if the concept of the "sword" is allowed to be developed upon in some depth.

So here, I try to develop a mechanic on a similar basis, that's not a sword of Damocles, but a house of flying daggers! Dodging one only puts you in the way of another.

Assumption: The characters are all in several kinds of immediate danger.

So, we have several threats, set depending on the situation. In this sample mechanic, any character can trigger any threat, so these are either generic injuries which can happen to anyone, or otherwise specific events that aren't modified depending on who triggered them. Most of the threats should be such that they change the tactical layout of the conflict if they occur, but don't necessarily end it. Some sample situations:

Showdown on RMS Consequences
The rusted ruin of a ship lies bizarrely against the side of a mesa somewhere in the Painted Desert. The noted outlaw 100% Wang is having a gunfight against Sheriff Lazy Crow, on the ship's tilted deck. Threats:

[*]Falling off the deck.
[*]The ship collapses underfoot.
[*]Concealed munitions in the ship detonate.
[*]Someone intervenes.
[*]Someone tries to intervene and is killed.
[*]Maiming.
[*]Death.
[*]Lazy Crow's gun explodes.
[*]100% Wang's head is injured, causing him to forget his kung fu.[/list:u]Dinner with the Haythornthwaites
Ethan Haythornthwaite has brought his girlfriend, Numizihar Elmedlaoui, home to meet his parents for dinner. They are completely captivated and uncomfortable with the young lady's exotic demeanor. Threats:

[*]Asking an inappropriate question.
[*]A faux pas of body language.
[*]Spilling food on oneself.
[*]Spilling food on someone else.
[*]Answering an uncomfortably probing question.
[*]Being seen as indecorous.
[*]Being seen as stuffy.
[*]Leaving the meal in tears.[/list:u]So, each threat has a "threat rating", and the whole conflict has a threshold. A character's action generally consists of one of three options:

[*]Raise one threat rating by a large margin, and lower all the rest by a small margin.
[*]Lower one threat rating by a large margin, and raise all the rest by a small margin.
[*]Transfer danger from one threat to another.[/list:u]We can probably set up some way to measure margins of success such that any of these can raise, lower, or retain the same the total of all threat ratings. Whenever a character causes a threat's rating to exceed the threshold, he suffers the effects of that event.

So maybe characters have traits that make them better or worse at affecting particular threats (or simply cause them to have smaller or larger effects on them, which is a much less avoidable mechanic), so you end up differentiating characters by the bad things that happen to them.

Any thoughts appreciated.

[Jonathan Walton]

No comments except: damn that's cool.  Definitely a new way of modeling conflict that makes it less one-on-one confrontational and ensures that all the results are interesting.

Immediate thought: any way we could work this immediately into our Passions system for the arthaus wuxia thing we were working on.  So Passions wouldn't be Things That I Want to Happen, they'd be The Worst Possible Things That Could Happen and then the system would ensure that those things would come about.  This whole idiom would seem to fit fated tragedies really, really well.  You don't have to accidentally stumble into tragedies.  You just make up a whole bunch and the anticipation comes from seeing which one will happen.

Just when you wonder if there's anything new under the sun.  Thanks, Shreyas.

[LordSmerf]

Two interesting possibilities spring to mind:

1. Allowing players to drop a sword whenever they want to (or on their turn, or whatever).  That way you can funnel your chance of falling to X away and then drop X hoping to eliminate your competition (or whatever).  Alternatively you can take big risks by chanelling your overall risk into X and then dropping it, if you survive then you have significantly reduced your risk across the board.

2. Drop one sword each "combat round" or something.  Either in a predetermined order, or possibly at random.  This keeps the pressure up pretty high, you really don't want to be caught with all your risk on the wrong sword when it falls...

Anyway, I think the idea is pretty dang interesting (both in its original form, and in this one).

Thomas

[Sydney Freedberg]

This is definitely neat. It also happens to remind me a bit of the current version of TonyLB's Capes (see my sig for link).

In Capes any participant (both GM and players, both heroes and villains) can use his/her turn to state (1) a Goal they seek to achieve but which can be thwarted; or (2) an Event that will definitely happen but could end up benefiting one side or another. Once a Goal/Event is "on the board," both sides (or multiple sides) can invest resources and roll dice to try to take control of that Goal/Event -- but since resources are limited, there's often a hard choice about which you want to win at all costs, which you want to contest up to a point, and which you want to concede.

There are obvious differences -- Capes simulates comic book superheroes and thus is wild, wacky, and freewheeling, whereas this idea seems pretty grittily tactical -- but the convergent evolution is interesting, and cross-pollination could stimulate new and ever-neater ideas.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Hey Sydney,

Could you elaborate on what it means to "take control of" a Goal/Event? I really like the possibility of having new dooms inserted into the mix by the players. I'll have to read up on the Capes mechanic.

My thought is that this Damocles thing can be made intensely gritty, or, through manipulating the actual identity of the threats, their quantity, and their thresholds, it can be made somewhat more lighthearted (though still tense). The logic behind making my second example an uncomfortable family dinner was basically this; it's intended to demonstrate the different kinds of tension that the mechanic can create just by manipulating Color.

Thomas,

If we assume that you can modify a threat rating more or less arbitrarily, with the cascading effects on the other threats being mechanically determined, then 1 is fairly trivial to obtain, simply by allowing players to raise the threat of a sword up past the threshold. This more or less automatically will reduce the threat posed by the other dangers.

2 seems to come from some idea that a sword's effect, when it falls, is determined by its rating, and its falling is completely independent of that. This isn't really what I had in mind, but it's pretty damn interesting; can you elaborate on it a bit?

Jonathan,

I worry that using this will send the (unintended?) message, "All passion is the result of dread", which, while deeply exciting, doesn't seem to be evidenced in the source material. But it's a hugely interesting direction to investigate! I'll write up some thoughts on it presently.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Hey Sydney, Could you elaborate on what it means to "take control of" a Goal/Event? I really like the possibility of having new dooms inserted into the mix by the players.

That player power is a great feature Capes evolved, and I've thought of imitating it in My Eventual Game. To some degree, you get a process of negotiation, something vaguely like

"I want you to get beat up, look bad on tonight's local TV news, and fail to rescue the hostages."
"Well, I don't have unlimited resources to contest that, so I'll concede on looking bad on TV, but I'll give you a run for your money on beating me up, and no matter what I'm gonna save those hostages. Oh, and I want you to get captured by the cops."
"Can't have that! Hmmm. I'll divert some resources from clobbering you to making good my escape..."

and so on.

As for control: In Capes terms, "control" means always narrative control -- the winner says what happened -- and often roll-over bonuses to subsequent, related conflicts (called "Inspirations").

[Sydney Freedberg]

And, as Shreyas's "House of Flying Daggers" and Tony's Capes crosspollinated with Dogs in the Vineyard, Col. John Boyd's Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action loop theory, and all the other junk in my head, the following notional mechanic congealed:

Each round, a character's traits and any favorable aspects of the situation generate Points that character can use to influence the world around him. (If you prefer dice pool systems, "points" are dice; if you dislike dice pools, "points" are tokens of fixed value). Your character's disadvantages generate Points for his adversaries! (Interesting option --"Pushing it": Get extra Points for yourself at the cost of handing an equal or, better yet, greater number of Points to your adversaries).

Each round, characters take turns investing Points in Conflicts, one Point at a time, until no one has any useable traits or situational aspects left. You can create a new Conflict at any time simply by putting in an initial Point.

Conflicts can be anything, as  Shreyas listed in his example: "I try to hurt you"; "I try to scare you"; "I try to gain a tactical advantage"; "you fall off the slanting deck"; "I use the right forks and impress Lady Arburthnot." The only restriction is that Points invested in a Conflict must come from a character trait or situational aspect that is appropriate: No spending Points from your "Bone-Crushing Kung Fu" trait on "reassure the crying child."

At the end of a round, whichever character has the most Points invested in a particular Conflict may choose to Resolve or Continue:

If a Conflict resolves, any dice involved are rolled; then the difference between the total Points of the winner and the total Points of the loser turns into ... well... some kind of game-mechanical advantage that can be carried over into subsequent Conflicts. E.g. I try to scare you, I win by 5 Points, you now have a level-5 trait "Scared" that generates 5 Points a turn for me -- unless you decide to run, in which case being scared generates those points for you! Or I try to hurt you, I fail by 3 points, you now have a level-3 situational advantage over me because of how my failure left me exposed somehow.

If a Conflict continues, then each character with Points "invested" gets "interest" on those Points -- i.e. Points left in an unresolved Conflict grow more Points over time. WHY? Simulationist reason: To reflect that taking more time gives you a better chance of succeeding. Gamist reason: To give you an incentive to leave conflicts unresolved for a while, which creates a nice tactical dilemma of "go for it now with a few lousy Points, or wait and grow more points while hoping nothing else bad happens to be in the meantime?"

And then any unresolved Conflicts carry over to the next round and every gets to invest Points from their traits and situational advantages again.

The neat thing about this mechanic is that (like Capes) it forces trade-offs well beyond "do I allocate dice to my attack roll or my defense roll?" I.e. I initiate two Conflicts, "I try to hurt you" and "I try to scare you"; if you invest so heavily in not being scared that you lose the other conflict and get hurt, well obviously you were so busy being brave that you got your ass shot, moron; if you invest so heavily in not being hurt that you lose the other conflict and get scared, well, obviously you were so busy covering your ass that you lost your nerve, coward.

One key variable is how much "director power" is allowed in defining Conflicts. Capes allows huge director power: Players can set Goals, and even define Events that are going to happen one way or another, that involve 3rd parties, previously undefined elements of the setting or backstory, introducing new characters, etc.  For a more realistic feel, this director power would need to be restricted somewhat.