The Forge Archives

About 10 months into our Midnight campaign, we playtested HeroQuest for the setting a week ago.  

I pregenerated an all-evil cast of PCs to choose from, an NPC cast and a rudimentary R-map and some simple bangs, and off we went.  

Before I go into more detail, here's the result:  yup, we'll be converting over.  

First responses (going around the table):  

Player #1:  Shining eyes.  Like me she likes character-centred stuff and like me, she hasn't had many gaming opportunities outside the ubiquitous DnD.  She's been sold on HQ pretty much since I first started raving incoherently about it a while ago, and it looks like play hasn't disappointed.  "Fun session.  Now let's talk about what my PC will look like in HQ, ok..."  

Player #2:  Mixed, ending on an upbeat note.  Couldn't stay for the whole session (work interfering at short notice), and left looking a bit disappointed.  I talked to him afterwards. He says he'll miss the tons of dice rolling and combat tactics stuff we had in DnD, but is in favour of converting over anyway because he saw how much fun I had running it and the other players playing it.  He also told me that while he'd describe himself as a "powergamer" and "rollplayer", the most memorable moments from my game for him involved decisions his character made, and most notably one brilliant success talking a racist but powerful elf around to granting to humans more rights in the forest.  He's distrustful of a magic system without detailed spell descriptions but looks forward to having a chance at making his character more of a "talker" when we convert.  I'm planning to meet with him separately to talk over the magic system I want to use and give him input.

Player #3:  Mostly in favour.  Says he had fun, enjoyed how the system supports roleplay rather than shoehorning play into rules the way DnD tends to do.  As yet unconvinced about what could possibly be cool about extended contests - we ran through one primarily to see how the mechanics work and what to do with them in the future, which isn't a good introduction to them.

Me:  Wow.  Simply, wow.  I had suspected it but had no way of telling before I tried it:  HeroQuest supports the style I like incredibly well.  I was still struggling with the rules and some pesky engrained DnD habits (and will be for a while), but still it was enormously liberating for me to drop all the DnD ballast I've been struggling with in the past and focus on content of the game, both in prep and in play.  

Next post:  lessons taken and questions unresolved.

Two main learning lessons for me as a GM from this playtest session (I'm sure there will be tons more as we continue to play):  

1. When you're playing rules rather than SIS, be aware of it.  Rules play and SIS play are two different types of fun.

I used to think DnD was a game that supported tactical combat play.  This worried me a bit because our Midnight game is a game about a bunch of freedom fighters operating as guerrillas/budding shadow politicians in a warzone, so there's always been a strong focus on combat and pre-combat "tactical" discussions.  I feared that moving over to HeroQuest, which couldn't care less about combat merely because it's combat, might cause us to flounder a bit.  

We had (I think) three instances of "combat" (by which in this context I mean contests involving acts or threats of violence on at least one side) in the playtest - two simple contests, one extended contest.  Did they cause us to flounder? Yup, they did, to an extent, but not for the reasons I expected.  

Most of us enjoyed the simple contest in the opening scene: a run-in of the evil PCs and their minions with a group of stragglers from a fleeing band of resistance fighters, which was quickly dealt with.  Cool, players #1 and #3 said.  In DnD this would have taken an hour to set up and run through.  
Player #2 said he missed the "tactical" dimension and was a bit bored by the fight.  

Talking after the game, he and I got into a discussion about tactics.  It turns out that by "tactics" he means the whole DnD shebang.  How many squares on the battle grid for that Fireball?  How many rounds will this Stoneskin last before our fighters will have to beat the retreat?  Who's getting the last two potions of Blur and when do we drink them to ensure the effect doesn't run out during the fight?

All this is rules stuff, stuff that "happens" on the battle grid and can be counted out and displayed using minis.  It's got little to nothing to do what actually happens in the SIS before, during and after a fight.  What about using the terrain and light/darkness to your advantage? What about staging a distraction?  What about playing on the enemy's emotion to shake/enrage/move them?  Etc. - and that's not even going to the more exotic examples such as reciting heroic poetry to stop someone lobbing at you with their axe.  

DnD supports the first sort of tactics but not the second:  tactical rules play, yes.  Tactics that matter in the SIS?  No.  Combat is abstracted to what goes on on the battle grid and in computing the effect of the numerous combat and magic rules subsets.  It can be fun, yup, I enjoy it sometimes.  

The drawback for me after playing/running DnD for too long is that I've lost awareness of the other dimension, and the way I observed it, that's true of everyone in our group.  The instant there's potential for violence "we go into combat mode".  Thankfully, in HQ that doesn't mean "Let's get the rulebooks and the ruler out" - but in our playtest session it still means that we, all of us together, drop out of the shared imagination space and into a rules mindset.  

In play:  
- At the beginning of the session, players picked up their pregenerated characters, read the two or three sentences of intro blurb I provided for each, and jumped right in.  
- We are zooming along, everyone is having big-time fun playing evil-and-in-power characters for a change and making them nastier by the minute.  (They are looking forward to having their normal PCs encounter these baddies some time...)
- A game element that appears to be an enemy shows up. Contest time.
- People stop playing and sit staring blandly at their character sheets, computing, giving the bare bones of input.  "I hit the leader." "I hang back.  If my orcs can't deal with it, I charge in." It's not in the words so much as in the tone and in the mood around the table.  From one instant to the next, the spark has gone out of the game.  
- We roll dice (thankfully, it's a simple contest, so that's done with quickly), determine the outcome and move on.  
- Immediately, fun and group speed pick up again.  In hindsight, this "combat" felt like a glitch in the game rather than a moment of heightened drama, which is what I think a contest should be.

The glitch is much more noticeable in the extended contest:  
- The two remaining PCs plus minions have cornered the remaining resistance fighters, including one PC's elven double(?) agent / lover.  
- We decide to run this as an extended contest.  
- What happens feels much like a DnD combat with all the tactical rules fun taken away and close to zero SIS content.  It's my failing to a large extent: as much as I've tried to learn extended contests from the rulebook, I'm a kinesthetic type, so I don't grok the mechanics until about halfway through the contest.  Even then I'm too caught up in managing AP stuff to offer any interesting in-game content that the players might have played off of.  I'll make sure I reserve some brain capacity for the actual game next time I run an extended contest.  :)

Again in hindsight, I'm sure there was a lot of potential in that contest: the personal conflict between the PC and his NPC lover;  the personalities involved;  the fact that the players and I love to play off of each other to create scenes - only we never do that in "combat".  Somehow, it looks like to us, combat time is rules time.  It doesn't have to be that way and I'm sure we can find a more fun way.  

I just have to remember to break my own habit - and to offer opportunities for players to do the same.  

Now... How do I do that?  Any advice?

2.  Before you save things for tomorrow, check and double-check that you really don't want them today.

We'll be getting together for a character conversion session in a couple of weeks' time.  The R-map in the playtest scenario appears to have been useful to at least one player and I want people to have something more visual to refer to than our assorted cast list, so I'm now making a Relationship Map for our cast of recurring NPCs.  This has made me notice two things.  

(a)  The local cast of NPCs in the three refugee camps the PCs use as a combined base of operations tend to sit around all by themselves - when I look at "blood and sex" only, I get virtually no ties at all.  My first thought ws, "Blimey, what a dysfunctional bunch of NPCs".

Although that's not such a big problem now I've noticed it, could even turn into a benefit.  The camps started out by being bleak, starving, hopeless places when the PCs first arrived.  As they work in the area, things gradually change, and introducing some new ties over time will tie in ok with that development I think, showing that bit by bit, hope and life are returning to a previously desolate place.  
(The local NPCs' seeming isolation also leaves me more freedom to include ties to other places and factions, which is cool.)

So, I'll be ok with this bit I reckon.  


(b)  Now, to my problem child:

I so have political factions on both the oppression and resistance sides.  But in almost a year of play, none of that has entered play.  

The declared goal of the campaign has been from the start that the players want their PCs to eventually grow into heroes powerful enough to try and turn this whole war around.  In true DnD fashion, we've kept things nice and local at first, now as the PCs are reaching mid-levels, we're expanding into the environs a bit.   The large-scale stuff has never entered our minds as far as specific play was concerned.  

Big mistake on my part, that. How much more focus and direction the campaign could have had if I'd seen this at the outset!  It makes me gnash my teeth. (Not that that helps any.)
I was all caught up in that old DnD paradigm - low-level characters do low-level stuff.  Mid-level characters do mid-level stuff.  High-level characters don't happen unless you have the stamina to stay in the campaign for years and years.  Sigh.


Now, how to deal with this?  I'll be talking about it to my players when we convert their characters, obviously;  but I'd like to have some ideas for a solution.  
Going from "PCs know nothing" to "PCs now miraculously know about continental politics" is cheesy.  Having wagonloads of information dumped on them in game is a drag and a bore and extremely disempowering.  So - cut it up into fitting pieces?  Give every PC a sliver of the whole?  I don't have to reveal everything at once, obviously.  Have information filter slowly through as PCs achieve more and more?  This was my original, DnDish approach, and something about it doesn't feel quite right.

Whatever way I turn it, it feels to me as if I have to talk large-scale politics with the players to empower them, and do it now.  

How to deal with it in game is another matter. Hm. I'll keep thinking I guess. Unless somebody here has a genius solution to offer.

I'm going to preface this by saying I suck at giving advice. I don't know why. I just do. Recent developments have pretty much convinced me of that.

I'm going to follow that by saying I'm posting here in a spirit of helping out. I'm not pressing any agenda, style of play or any other BS on you or anyone else. If I talk about how I've done things or mistakes I've made and what I think it means, that's just me talking. It doesn't have to be how you or anyone else feels about it. You don't have to read/listen/adhere to anything I'm saying. I'm okay with that. I can be wrong. I can be a butthead. But if I say anything that you read that you think might help you out, then that makes this worth it (to me). That's my purpose here.

I just don't want there to be any confusion on those matters.

Quote from: StalkingBlueThe glitch is much more noticeable in the extended contest:  
- The two remaining PCs plus minions have cornered the remaining resistance fighters, including one PC's elven double(?) agent / lover.  
- We decide to run this as an extended contest.  
- What happens feels much like a DnD combat with all the tactical rules fun taken away and close to zero SIS content.  It's my failing to a large extent: as much as I've tried to learn extended contests from the rulebook, I'm a kinesthetic type, so I don't grok the mechanics until about halfway through the contest.  Even then I'm too caught up in managing AP stuff to offer any interesting in-game content that the players might have played off of.  I'll make sure I reserve some brain capacity for the actual game next time I run an extended contest.  :)

I don't think this is a failing on your part. My first extended contest I tried to make climbing a tower some big, dramatic thing. It sounds like your first extended contest was far and above better than mine.

In the HQ game in which I'm currently playing, extended contests are pretty rare. In fact, (and I don't think I'm misrepresenting the game or GM) about 90% or more of the contests are just simple contests. A participant on the Forge (I think) once suggested to me (when I was starting out) to let the players' interest determine what type of contest you'll use. Just because something's a combat doesn't necessarily dictate that it should be an Extended Contest. You probably already know that but it's an important point, IMO.

That said (and I think it's good advice) -- there are times when players' interests can be misgauged (for lack of any real English term). :) I don't think that's really a GM fault either -- people are just hard to read sometimes.

Without getting too far into a gamer's sociology debate, here's some things I've come across when I've stumbled into an Extended Contest only to find out that I shouldn't have --

1) Start bidding crazy. Bet the farm. Be careful though because if you're using a powerful ability you could actually gank the players. The point is that you don't *beat* them so much as speed the contest up and potentially "scare" them. A good example would be Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi betting 30 or so AP by bringing Luke's sister, Princess Leia, into the witty banter. Didn't work out so well for him. As GM, you can pull the same kind of stunts. I do so with impunity when I sense that players aren't clicking with a dramatic contest.

2) Use abilities other than the run-of-the-mill ones. Banter, insults, affronts to honor, dignity and manhood. All these work great in combative Extended Contests. If you see that your extended contests are just devolving into "I add up my augments, I bet 7 AP, I hit/miss..." doldrums, then have your henchman call another character an "ill-toilet-trained sissypants" and bet 15 AP on it. Well, don't use that terminology but it may just get the players thinking outside the 10' square as regards Extended Contests. (which helps liven things up)

Quote from: StalkingBlueI just have to remember to break my own habit - and to offer opportunities for players to do the same.  

Now... How do I do that?  Any advice?

Outside of what I gave above, the only other advice I can really handout is to resist the temptation to use extended contests in all but the most necessary instances. They work well for showdowns and combats but there's no real rule saying there has to be one per session. I can't remember the last Extended Contest I participated in and we've been playing off and on for 8 months or so. Not saying there hasn't *been* an extended contest in that time. I just don't remember when the last one was.

If I were running HQ (and I've done this in the past), I'd save up Extended Contests for points in time where the heroes were underdogs, the stakes were astronomical and I really could not sleep at night knowing that I hadn't used an Extended Contest. IMO, Extended Contests really can favor a saavy player. If players play them wisely (IMO), it's possible they could use an EC to defeat a more powerful opponent. That's harder to do with Simple Contests.

So, that's when (and why) I would use them. For all the rest of the time, I'd likely just use Simple Contests (or Automatic ones).

I hope some of this helps. Again, if it didn't, I'm sorry. It's just a subjective opinion with no real basis in anything other than my experience. Please feel free to ignore it if it's not helpful.

Scott

I think Scott's talking about my game. And it's at least 90% simple, if not more. I estimated that I'd had about 6 extended contests in 19 sessions. Well, 23 sessions now.

So, like Scott said (he's much better at giving advice than he credit's himself for).

Dude! Darth so won that round of the contest! Luke totally lost his cool after he said that!

If you ever have a problem trying to guage whether or not somthing should be an extended contest, remember this climactic scene between Luke, the Emperor, and Darth Vader. No, they don't have to be that climactic to use an extended contest. But think not just about the importance, but about how the conflict in question was framed. Note how that scene is so long that they break away, and come back to it several times. Even a five minute long Bruce Lee thug thrashing doesn't break in the action usually. If it only takes 5 minutes on screen, even though that's a long time in a movie, it should be a simple contest.

Only the marathon scenes that have to be paced out should be extended contests. Where each "salvo" is worthy of a scene itself.

OK, we beat that one to death.


Second, you'll get faster, and more comfortable with all sorts of contests. This was your first session of play. And everyone learned how things work basically, right? It's not a tough system, it's consistent, and it doesn't have many exceptions to how to resolve things. So, eventually, it'll start to go really quickly, you'll find.

Except when it doesn't. Actually what happens is that the players will start to get good at it. In fact, watch for player #2 to actually "get it" suddenly at some point, and become really good at making things dramatic in contests. Just a prediction. Anyhow, when they get good at it, suddenly they'll be describing how their augments are involved in more detail, and generally helping you make things interesting. This can take a while. But that's OK, because it's all smile time, not work.

You can encourage this to get them there more quickly. First thing is to question augments. Don't say, "No, that won't work" ever, instead say, "Wha? How do you figer?" Then get this big smile on your face when they explain it.

If they take the time to explain it, give them the benefit of the doubt. So it's a bit of a stretch, so what? Reward players who try hard to make things interesting. Even if they're not always that successful. Because they'll become more successful when you do. They'll note that you kinda balked at this one, and will automatically tell you why it works the next time they stretch an augment. And they'll get more entertaining to make you buy in.

So get entertaining back. Here's a neat fact. Don't worry about hurting the PCs. You can't kill them accidentally (if you think you can, then ask me why it's not true). In fact, HQ will have them loving to lose. So go to town on them. If they're not losing every other contest, you're taking it too easy on them. And sometimes, just squish them with something way bigger than they are. Puts things in perspective, and gives them something to shoot for. Play wild and carefree, and the players will too.

Eventually it's all smiles and nods in contests. Might take some time to get there, but not too long. Realizing that it's on it's way, reliably, will help your confidence, too. You can already feel what it's trying to do, can't you. Just have some faith that it will. And it will.

Why does it work? Because HQ played this way encourages the conflict resolution to produce the sort of SIS detail you're looking for. (To get all technical).


OK, on to the other issue, information. Here's the key. Play exactly like you did before, with only one exception. Give all the NPCs motives to spill the beans to the PCs. Don't infodump, no. Make the player feel that his hero is special because the NPC needs him to know where the dark cabal hangs out because the NPC wants revenge or whatever. The usual mode of play is that NPCs are obstacles to giving out information. Simply change that to it's opposite, and you'll be where you want to be in not time, and it'll be more than just plausible, it'll be dramatic, too. Because the heroes will get all tangled up with said NPCs on the way.

Before you know it, you'll have more plot happening than you can keep track of (literally, last night I lost track of all the stuff my players were creating through interaction).

Mike

Hi Scott, thanks for replying.  

I'm much indebted to you already for your Midnight conversion.
I did end up writing my own keywords (not least because that's part of how I learn a system, by playing around with stuff and seeing what it does for me), and I'm planning to use a much simplified magic system. But your conversion and especially your carefully thought out and extensive design notes helped me divorce HQ rules from Glorantha setting ballast in the first place and get an idea of what I wanted in a conversion for my game.  Without your document, I don't know how I'd ever have got anywhere, so many thanks for that.

Quote from: ScriptyI don't think this is a failing on your part. My first extended contest I tried to make climbing a tower some big, dramatic thing. It sounds like your first extended contest was far and above better than mine.

Hey, I can see climbing a tower as cool extended contest for a determined climber.  At least when the tower is famous for not being easily climbed, and knows how to fight back.  And the player in question wants a big, long-lasting spotlight on this.  

In my contest I think I had a ton of potential, but no real clue (and as I've mentioned, no brain capacity available) how to capitalise on it or give the players cues what to do with the strange "hole in the scene" that the absence of DnD combat rules seemed to leave there.  

Looking over what I posted last night, I notice that I was so caught up in my style and technique thoughts when I wrote the posts that I omitted to actually include play detail.  Let me try to explain the setup a bit here, of course I can also supply more play detail as needed.  We had:  

PCs:
Alander Everett, Erenlander Temple Legate - has had an affair and "mutually beneficial exchange of information" with the Feen
Raedrim, Wood Elf Channeler - inclined to start an affair with Rhianne, who appears to be of like mind
Luggurz, Orc commander - addict of Plue Powder drug provided by Alf  

Raedrim was played by player #2, so when he had to leave for work I took the liberty of using the character up in a Bang:  Raedrimm was found assassinated with a poisoned orc dagger. (By Rhianne, who'd got both poison and dagger from Alf.)

Major NPCs:
Orban Nice, Mayor of Lailan, well-known collaborator
Rhianne, Orban's daughter
Alf Addings, resistance-friendly apothecary tolerated mainly for his drugs, Rhianne's lover*
Pincus, resident Legate in Lailan, Alf's half-brother*  
Rob the Cautious, Erenlander Human, leader of the resistance band the PCs are in the process of hunting down, wounded and in hiding in Lailan
Feen, Wood Elf Channeler, presently in Rob's company
*Facts not shown on R-map handed out to players at beginning of play

The PCs' orders are to capture Rob and Feen alive and bring them to their base in Al-Kadil.  


In the setup for the extended contest a the end of the session, the PCs with their minions and Pincus with his minions have run Rob&co. to ground in the Mayor's cellar while orcs are searching the town.  We have:
- the two surviving PCs Alander and Luggurz with some temple guards and orcs;
- Pincus with some orcs, eager to be the one to "claim the kill" and spoil Alander's mission by getting Rob&co. killed after Alander and Luggurz have arrested, mutilated and killed his half-brother Alf;  
- Rob (on a stretcher), Feen and a few survivors huddling around them, some desperately making a stand while the others are struggling to maneuvre Rob up a narrow and steep escape hole;
- Rhianne, who was waiting outside to guide the group out of town if they'd made it out of the cellar.  

There's all sorts of things I could have had the NPCs do to set the tone for the contest and turn it into something different from and (I hope) more fun than "oh, we're in combat, I hit A, you cast a spell" - but in the event I didn't think of it.  Well.  

QuoteIn the HQ game in which I'm currently playing, extended contests are pretty rare. In fact, (and I don't think I'm misrepresenting the game or GM) about 90% or more of the contests are just simple contests. A participant on the Forge (I think) once suggested to me (when I was starting out) to let the players' interest determine what type of contest you'll use.

I agree with all of that. In the event, the main reason we even ran the extended contest was that both player #1 and I were keen to see what the mechanics do in play.  Right after running it I wasn't so sure whether the situation had warranted an extended contest.  

In retrospect it looks more like we did have a setup with enough dimensions to support an extended contest (if people wanted), it was just that we didn't know what to do with all that freedom provided by the absence of DnD combat rules.

Notably, I didn't think to capitalise on the conflict potential in the scene (other than "Kill the renegades and take those two alive!") - Pincus's suppressed rage and envy, Feen's emotions towards Alander, two rivalling bands of orcs etc.  Looking at it now, I don't think it's clear at all how the conflict would go and who would turn out to be on whose side, but we played it out like DnD combat: identify foe, go into "combat mode" (i.e. drop out of SIS and get thinking about rules), run through it.
Player #1 put colour in by negotiating with me and describing the effects of the spells Alander (her PC) cast at Feen, which was fun.  Player #2 at this point (not before) went into full Gamist mode and was playing the character sheet, not the character.

QuoteJust because something's a combat doesn't necessarily dictate that it should be an Extended Contest. You probably already know that but it's an important point, IMO.

Sure. In fact I started the session with a single-contest combat to give the players an idea of how things were going to be different from usual.  Most of us liked that a lot, although player #2 says he missed the round-by-round fun we were used to before.  I'll have to make sure to draw tactics and (where desired) narrating back-and-forth in contests even when we wrap it up with a single roll, so that people can still get tactical enjoyment out of the game at some level.  

Quote1) Start bidding crazy...
2) Use abilities other than the run-of-the-mill ones...

Good points both, thanks.  Of course I knew (theoretically) that you could use abilities that wouldn't be "combat actions" in the sense of RPGs with combat rules subsets (such as DnD) - that's one of the things that made me want to try out HQ. In practice, however... :)  

I reckon practice is the word here, or rather lack of same on my part.  And, frustratingly, long-engrained habits from operating in the rigid rules framework of DnD.  But I'm happy I'm getting somewhere different, if slowly.

Quote from: Mike HolmesI think Scott's talking about my game. And it's at least 90% simple, if not more. I estimated that I'd had about 6 extended contests in 19 sessions. Well, 23 sessions now.

Hm ok. I guess we might end up with a similar ratio.  Right now I'm thinking I might prod my players gently to try extended contests a bit more often at first, until we get the hang of them. I at least would like to get a clearer view of what we can do with extended contests and where the potential for fun is for our group.

Quote...But think not just about the importance, but about how the conflict in question was framed. Note how that scene is so long that they break away, and come back to it several times. Even a five minute long Bruce Lee thug thrashing doesn't break in the action usually. If it only takes 5 minutes on screen, even though that's a long time in a movie, it should be a simple contest.

Only the marathon scenes that have to be paced out should be extended contests. Where each "salvo" is worthy of a scene itself.

Wow, that's brilliant.  I hadn't realised that before, but I agree.  This speaks in favour of actually pacing extended contests in some cases, by cutting back and forth between the contest and other scenes.
(I know the book explains that for longterm things like election campaigns, but I hadn't realised it might work with conflicts that are resolved in one go.)  

QuoteSecond, you'll get faster, and more comfortable with all sorts of contests. This was your first session of play. And everyone learned how things work basically, right? It's not a tough system, it's consistent, and it doesn't have many exceptions to how to resolve things. So, eventually, it'll start to go really quickly, you'll find.

Yup, that's what I'm hoping. The simple contest mechanic is straightforward enough anyway;  even in this first session I was thinking about scene framing and contest framing a lot more than about abstract rules stuff, which was a great relief after DnD.

QuoteExcept when it doesn't. Actually what happens is that the players will start to get good at it. In fact, watch for player #2 to actually "get it" suddenly at some point, and become really good at making things dramatic in contests. Just a prediction.

You can encourage this to get them there more quickly. First thing is to question augments. Don't say, "No, that won't work" ever, instead say, "Wha? How do you figer?" Then get this big smile on your face when they explain it.

If they take the time to explain it, give them the benefit of the doubt. So it's a bit of a stretch, so what? Reward players who try hard to make things interesting. Even if they're not always that successful. Because they'll become more successful when you do. They'll note that you kinda balked at this one, and will automatically tell you why it works the next time they stretch an augment. And they'll get more entertaining to make you buy in.

Ok, great. That actually plays much towards my preferred style of interaction with players - some times it works better than others, but it's what I try to do.  

QuoteSo get entertaining back. Here's a neat fact. Don't worry about hurting the PCs. You can't kill them accidentally (if you think you can, then ask me why it's not true). In fact, HQ will have them loving to lose. So go to town on them. If they're not losing every other contest, you're taking it too easy on them. And sometimes, just squish them with something way bigger than they are. Puts things in perspective, and gives them something to shoot for. Play wild and carefree, and the players will too.

I might have to tread lightly on this for a bit while we all learn what to do with this particular dimension of HQ freedom.  - Hm, or possibly that's another DnD habit of mine speaking here, not sure which.  

The problem I see is that traditionally the group has focussed strongly on success as the core goal of the game.  This is due to a number of things:  
- the overall goal we've formulated at the outset of the campaign, i.e. win this war;
- of the kind of play DnD supports best, i.e. success rocks (and nets XP and items), failure sucks; and
- a tradition the group has grown into through playing in player #3's long-standing, wonderfully challenging, hard-Gamist DnD campaign.  

Though one of our best and most memorable sessions in the Midnight game resulted from a big failure on the PCs'/players' part, when they spectacularly bungled an attack on some enemy forces they'd badly underestimated.  The attack ended with one PC down, one PC surrendering to save that PC's life and the remaining two fleeing for their lives into unsafe, orc-infested territory.  The session we played around the two captured PCs escaping and the two others sneaking back in to help was ultra-cool and charged with tension.  Strangely enough, althought the players still talk about the session, it hasn't made them want to fail more often...
I suppose next time this comes up I need to stress that the entire session sprung from a "failure" situation.  

Anything in particular I could try to ease the group over into a new mindset about success/failure and fun/unfun?

QuoteEventually it's all smiles and nods in contests. Might take some time to get there, but not too long. Realizing that it's on it's way, reliably, will help your confidence, too. You can already feel what it's trying to do, can't you. Just have some faith that it will. And it will.

Yup, I feel it. I also feel some trepidation and the occasional stab of guilt at dragging the group into a new rules system halfway through the campaign, and I know that with making a big change like that I take a risk.  But I think it's worth it.  

QuoteOK, on to the other issue, information. Here's the key. Play exactly like you did before, with only one exception. Give all the NPCs motives to spill the beans to the PCs. Don't infodump, no. Make the player feel that his hero is special because the NPC needs him to know where the dark cabal hangs out because the NPC wants revenge or whatever. The usual mode of play is that NPCs are obstacles to giving out information. Simply change that to it's opposite, and you'll be where you want to be in not time, and it'll be more than just plausible, it'll be dramatic, too. Because the heroes will get all tangled up with said NPCs on the way.

(Emphasis mine)

Ah, now I see!  I had to think about this for a while before I could see what in this identifies my problem.  

I've never run NPCs as obstacles to information by default, yet the flow of information in my games has always been somewhat lacking.  All those NPCs sitting around waiting only to be asked ...
I simply hadn't given them good enough motives to spill the beans.

Quote from: StalkingBlueThe problem I see is that traditionally the group has focussed strongly on success as the core goal of the game.  This is due to a number of things:  
- the overall goal we've formulated at the outset of the campaign, i.e. win this war;
- of the kind of play DnD supports best, i.e. success rocks (and nets XP and items), failure sucks; and
- a tradition the group has grown into through playing in player #3's long-standing, wonderfully challenging, hard-Gamist DnD campaign.

The third point is the hardest to deal with, I think. Like a court case, nothing so influences the outcome of a game as precedent. Changing it is very difficult, but luckily the methods are usually pretty simple – and you've already started doing them. It sounds, from your posts, like you've already had discussions with the players about why you want to change this for your game. That's step number one. You've also started analyzing your own play style. That's step number two. Step number three is to keep doing both of those things. Keep talking to them, keep analyzing and figuring things out, and keep reinforcing the changes that you want to make. It takes a lot of energy and patience, as most of us have a tendency to collapse into what is familiar and default out, but if you keep at it and your players are willing it will work in the long run. You'll set new precedents, and then you'll be able to run from those.

The second point is also a solid one, and something that I've been encountering as I've started a new group into an A Song of Ice and Fire RPG with HQ rules. A lot of the players are D&D players (or White Wolf – which in this regard is often similar) and in our set-up session became visibly disturbed when I told them that they could count on losing contests in this game at least once a session or so. They immediately became concerned that their characters would be stripped of their cool, that their protagonist role would be removed, and that they'd never be able to advance or grow the characters. They also were afraid that losing would make them unable to effect of change the world, which leads into your first point – if we lose, how can we win the war?

With my group I was able to show them the way around this by going to the novels we were basing the game off of. However there are plenty of examples of how losing a contest does not mean you lose the war in film, literature, and history. Getting your players to look at these and really think about how they apply to their characters and the story they are telling may give you a chance to draw out the dramatic potential in failure. They also can help you as a GM by showing you how to stage failure so that it doesn't de-protagonize the PCs.

Let us look for a moment at Braveheart. It's a good match for your campaign, I think, being a movie about a poor man's rebellion against the more powerful, entrenched, and duplicitous powers that are unjustly ruling his country. (It also has more to do with fantasy than history, but I'll leave that rant aside.) It starts with a war and ends with Scotland free, but the whole meat and juice of the story is about the failures in between. William fails to save his wife, is defeated in a major battle, and is betrayed and then executed in a spectacularly brutal fashion. These are the kinds of failures that many players associate with being character, goal, or game ending – and yet they're the very source of the drama that makes the movie good. If old Willy had saved his wife, then stormed the keep, invaded England, tossed Longshanks off the ramparts, then made himself King it wouldn't have been nearly so interesting of a movie. If your players can see that, can see that it was the rebuilding after defeat that made the story and the hero, then you're on the right track.

Also, watch the scenes as a GM. In every case where Willy fails it is because of circumstances he couldn't control. He doesn't make a dork of himself in failure, he doesn't do things so stupid that you think he deserves to die, he doesn't ever chicken out, run away, or plain give up. When his wife is killed it's because he tried to get her out before him and only left when he thought she was safe. It was only because the enemy outnumbered him so badly that he lost – not because he made an error. When he's defeated in his major battle it is because people he trusted (because he had to) betrayed him and left him without support. It's fairly obvious that he would have won if those rat-fink nobles hadn't snuck out on him, and so the failure is thematic to the character's struggle of uniting Scotland as well as not being something that makes him look dumb. Finally, when he goes to the meeting where he is betrayed he goes in knowing that it could be a trap and knowing that he could end up dead because of it. He does it anyway because that is his role and because he knows that without trust his goals cannot be finished. The movie goes so far to support him in this that it makes him correct about the noble who had betrayed him before – Robert the Bruce really is on his side. It's not just that Willy lost, it's that Robby did too, and so Willy gets to be right about the one man that matters. Even in loss he was correct about the man that mattered, and went into the situation knowing it could happen.

In all of these cases it is the failure, not the success, that sets up the whole next arc of the story. Being able to show the PCs that, along with the fact that failure doesn't mean you're a looser, should go a long way to helping them re-orient away from the idea that they always have to win. There have been very few wars in the history of mankind that have been one victory after another. It's even a cliché at this point – battles and wars are not the same, because you can win one and lose the other.

Hi.

I have a question for the guys with lots of HQ experience.

RE: Stalking Blues question about hooking the Players into the "factions" and the still vague Goal of the War:

In addition to the suggestions made so far, could the players also add reasons or goals for WHY they are fighting the war onto their character sheets?  I mean, could SB approach the players and say, "Listen, we haven't really talked about this yet,  but is there something you're looking for from all this?"

They might then come up with some negotiated backstory elements that become attributes.

For example, a player comes up with, "Seeking the Brotherhood of the Sun." 13.  Now, SB might not have a Brother of the Sun, but he might have a faction lying around that serves this function quite well and could easily slot it in.  (Apparently they haven't made any appearearances yet.)

Or, "Last survivor of Village Ruined by Badguys 13," or what not.

I know this breaks a couple of continuity concerns in the transfer between games, but this is kind of how HQ is geared to work, right?  If it is, then it seems that this transition period would be a perfect place to add in details, just like in a tv series.  "Look, we haven't mentioned this one way or another yet, but here's a fact about me you don't know yet..." and so on.  It's not a contradiction of what's come before.  It's an expansion of what's already been revealed!

Essentiallly SB says, "Because of the nature of this game, we can expand who your characters are, what they want, and what matters to them. Let's do that, because it actually matters to this game."

So, first, I'm asking this to see if I'm getting the game right.

And second, I'm actually offering this kind of thinking for SB and his players if I'm getting the game right.

Best,

Christopher

Quote from: Christopher KubasikSo, first, I'm asking this to see if I'm getting the game right.

And second, I'm actually offering this kind of thinking for SB and his players if I'm getting the game right.

First, you are right. So right that I feel vaguely retarded for not having thought of it in my post.

Second, SB, he has a good point. If you can increase character and player buy in, getting them to add their own individual ideas and goals to the greater theme, then the SIS will grow.

Thanks Brand.

And StalkingBlue, this approach might make Player #3's eyes all shiny.

No, he won't be able to count off hexes for a fireball.

But...

"You mean, if I negotiate my guy to scene where he's hunting down the bastard who killed off my village, I get to augment my rolls with that attribute?"

"Yeah."

"Oh."  Beat. "OH!"

Good luck,

Christopher

Quote from: StalkingBlueHm ok. I guess we might end up with a similar ratio.  Right now I'm thinking I might prod my players gently to try extended contests a bit more often at first, until we get the hang of them. I at least would like to get a clearer view of what we can do with extended contests and where the potential for fun is for our group.

It's not that particular ratio that I was trying to say is important. My point is, rather, that what you need to do is simply move to the ratio that works best for your group. My personal example is that there are very few extended contests because that's what we like to have happen, generally. If extended contests seem to be bogging down your game, you should move in that direction as well.

That is, there's absolutely nothing about a given conflict in terms of the in-game situation that makes it "automatically" have to be one sort of conflict or another - I recently ran an entire war on one die roll, for instance, and in other instances I've had contests about verbal sparring at a party between two PCs (with no audience) be an extended contest. When a contest is one of the other should depend entirely on whether or not the players (including the narrator) feel as players that it should be. For whatever reason.

Let me reiterate that. The reasons for having an extended contest are entirely player reasons. Something about the situation has to say to all of the participants in the game (all, not just the player with the hero in question and the narrator) that it demands special treatment.

QuoteWow, that's brilliant.  I hadn't realised that before, but I agree.  This speaks in favour of actually pacing extended contests in some cases, by cutting back and forth between the contest and other scenes.
(I know the book explains that for longterm things like election campaigns, but I hadn't realised it might work with conflicts that are resolved in one go.)  

Sounds cool. While we have done extended contests that had breaks, they were like your election example (for instance Josh ran a courting contest for my character that lasted several sessions, and several in-game weeks, which had all sorts of actions in between rounds). But I think it would be cool to do a fight or the like this way.

Basically, I think the criteria for this would be to do it when the other players in the game are facing their own extended contests, or a series of other contests. That is, while Luke battles Vader and the Emperor, his friends are doing all sorts of contests on Endor. So, yeah, as long as what you're flashing to is as dramatic, I think it's a go.

Conversely, you could establish a contrast by flashing to a totally non-conflict situation. You know what I'm talking about. In the one scene the hero battles furiously and in the other his buddy relaxes with some light music, a book, and a snifter of brandy. There's a term for this from movies, IIRC. Perhaps Chris would know what it is. Juxtaposition, in any case.

QuoteI might have to tread lightly on this for a bit while we all learn what to do with this particular dimension of HQ freedom.  - Hm, or possibly that's another DnD habit of mine speaking here, not sure which.  

Follow Brand's suggestions here. I'll add a couple of notes.

First, like he says, do discuss what's going on to analyze play, but, whatever you do, don't bring up Forge terminology. Just use plain English. There's nothing worse than theory talk to really gum up the works. And you don't need it at all to establish a clear creative agenda throughout all the players. It's tempting to drop into the shorthand of GNS and the like, but it never works well with non-theorists.

Generally speaking, I think this article might have something pertinent to say to you: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9812

It's not targeted at your specific case, but I think tangentially hits some points that are pertinent.

Second, I have to reiterate what Brand said about protagonists and failure. Here's a little exercise. Ask them to name a really cool character who never fails. It simply can't be done. Even the Baddest-Assed of characters fail. In fact, one could argue that a character can't be a real protagonist without failure. Would Indiana Jones be half as cool if he wasn't constantly beat up?

I always comment that there's been this running contest through the years about who is the most beat up actor, Harrison Ford, or Mel Gibson. William Wallace indeed. But what about Gibson's entry into fame in Mad Max? Who loses more than he does (to say nothing of all the beatdowns he suffers in the sequels - want to bet he bleeds in next year's installation)? How often does he get beaten up as Riggs in the Leathal Weapon series of films? Hell, in Payback, the entire premise is that he starts out having lost everything to the badguys.

For Ford, Han Solo gets frozen in corbamite. Think of how Roy Batty destroys Decker's hand in Blade Runner, or how his girlfriend has to save him from being killed by the big guy ("Wake up, time to die.") He and his family get all blowed up in Patriot Games. Hell, he even gets dirty as the president in Air Force One.

In fact, name a movie where these guys play somebody that nothing really, really terrible happens to. These are their bread and butter roles. Do I have to even mention Clint Eastwood?

And all of these guys are just the obvious physical examples of harm. Consider all the psychological harm they go through in these sorts of movies and in all of their other roles. Fer chrisakes Gibson did Hamlet, in which his Father has been murdered, but he can't prove it, his mother is sleeping with the murderer, he accidentally kills his girlfriend's father, and she subsequently committs suicide.

I mean, it's about sympathy. If you don't feel bad for the character, then you're not going to feel good when they finally kick ass. For the game in question, start with the question for the players, "What has your character lost, because of the evil?" That's right, start them off as having suffered defeat, and lots of it. To get to the source matierial for Midnight, think Faramir. What has he suffered? Loss of a beloved land? Loss of a brother? Loss of all of his friends on the battle field? Loss of respect and a father's love? In fact, just what does Faramir have left at the end - just what keeps him going? Just his own personal honor. So is it extra cool when he gets the girl at the end? Hell yeah.

So Chris is absolutely right. The answer to "What has your character lost to evil?" should be represented in numerical form right on the character sheet. For some heroes it should be "Lament's Dead Family" as his family relationship, representing that his family was slain by the forces of Izrador. For others it should be a "One Eyed 10w" flaw that represents how he lost his eye to Orc maraders. For another it's a selected personality trait of "Saddened by Damage to the Woods."

QuoteThough one of our best and most memorable sessions in the Midnight game resulted from a big failure on the PCs'/players' part, when they spectacularly bungled an attack on some enemy forces they'd badly underestimated.

That's your ammo right there. It's not just that this ended up causing more interesting plot to occur, that's only a part of it. Ask the players if it felt extra cool, when they finally righted the situation. Then ask them how they expect to get that feeling if their characters don't lose something first.

QuoteAnything in particular I could try to ease the group over into a new mindset about success/failure and fun/unfun?

First, have a frank discussion about something. How many times did you fudge the dice in D&D so that they'd win? I'm going to guess that it was a bunch. Why? Because you're one of those conscientious GMs who wants to insure that the "story" part of the game happens. I mean, it's no fun if the PCs get dead, is it? Or have to retreat in the final scene to heal up and come back later to take a second stab at it. Where's the story in that? So you over-ride the rules in order to ensure that the story is better. D&D doing little to support the creation of drama itself. Then ask them if they were aware of your fudging. When they say yes, and that it bothered them in some ways, then ask them if they'd like it if you'd never have to fudge again.

When they say yes (yes I'm making a hell of a lot of assumptions here), then ask them if they trust you to make sure that their characters are cool. Because, after all, this is what the fudging was about in the other system, where only success is cool. If they trust you, then they have to understand that you, as narrator in HQ have the power to assure that not only do their characters never die in the wrong situations, but that they fail with aplomb. Without altering the system at all.

As Brand points out, it's about making the character look good failing. When Indiana Jones fails to win a fight, is it because he fought badly? No, it's always "the die roll." This is an important mnenomic. The ability level of a character does not change in a contest, the only variable is the die roll. Think of this as a statement. The character always does as well as his ability level would indicate - any failure is the result of the randomness of situation that occurs. So, I fail to seduce the chick? Not because I'm not cool - the character sheet says I'm good at this. No, it's because some stupid waiter spilled soup on me at an inorpportune moment - that representing me rolling a 20.

Now, that's an oversimplification - what you really want to do is to make sure that occasionally it is the character's "fault". But here what you want to do is highlight any failings that the character has. Maybe he failed to impress the girl because of the fear of spiders that he has on the character sheet. The player took it, so he must be willing to have that be a factor. It makes the character sympathetic again, human.

The only real sin is saying that the character lost the seduction contests because he acted stupidly. If it's not on the character sheet, then it's not a characteristic the player wants to see come out in play.

So, if the players trust you to let the dice fall where they may, and to make their character's look cool when they fail, then what's next? Here's an interesting thing. Ask them if they thought it was realistic that all of their opponents were always tailored to their ability level? That is, why is it that they only met orcs when they were first level, and ogres when they were fourth? Why didn't they meet up with any Ogres at first level?

Because in D&D that would mean no interesting player conflict to overcome (they'd just lose), and because in losing it would mean that they lost their characters. What fun would that be? In fact, since D&D is about resource management, the players don't encounter "equal" foes hardly ever. Instead they encounter a series of way less powerful foes designed to slowly drain them of those resources.

What's really cool about HQ is that you no longer have to worry about this. You can instead concentrate on what's interesting, plausible, realistic, or dramatic as a foe. You can put anything out there, and not worry about the players getting punished.

So put anything out there. That is, there are basically three sorts of conflicts in HQ, IMO. In the first, the opposition is low, and it exists merely to show off how cool the heroes are. Have them occassionally roll against something of "default" (14) resistance, or even lower, just to display what they do well. In the second, the opposition is about equal to the heroes. This is cool, because it means that it's a "real" fight. Close. With a real possibility that the heroes will come out defeated. Unlike "close" fights in D&D where the players are actually pretty much garunteed to win (or the actual close ones where they have a 50% chance of losing their character). The great thing is that, if you want, every contest can be a close one. Because failing is OK, and because Hero Points mean that the player gets some control over when they succeed and fail.

Lastly, there are the ones with a relatively high resistance. These are the ones that you use to establish trust on how cool it is to fail. Just stomp the heroes. And I mean stomp them. Find that "high level" beastie in the setting, and have it come along.

No, wait, skip that - looking at the setting, have a Night King come along. No, seriously. Rate him at what you think he should be rated at, which is probably far beyond the heroes to deal with (I'm thinking some abilities in the 5 to 6 mastery range? Maybe more?). But he's just passing through. He doesn't know about the PCs, and has way more important things to do than deal with them. He doesn't know that they're "rebels," but something about them makes him leery. So, lacking time to investigate more closely, he casts a spell on them to "mark" them as potential troublemakers. Don't tell the players what the spell is, just say that they have to try to resist his magic. When the players fail, apply the result as some penalty to the player resistance to being identified as trouble by all Night Kings in the future. If they get a Complete Failure, there is no roll in future situations like this, all Night Kings simply identify them as trouble automatically.

If they manage to succeed somehow...awesome. It might just happen if they stack enough abilities roll well, and spend HP. No matter what the result, the NK moves on to his important business. If the heroes do get all crazy after that, and try to attack him, then he casts a spell to capture them, and hands them over to an assistant to interrogate while he heads on to his more important business. Rule that a complete defeat does something like taking an arm off of a character, or a leg, or, more metaphysically a "Seared Soul" or something reminiscent of Frodo's injury on Weathertop. Give them an appropriate flaw to represent it (at an appropriate level, too, like 10W2 - yeah I'm serious). Or kill a follower involved. Or maybe they kill him, in which case now they're really in a heap of trouble, right?

This does a few things. First, if you'd wanted to, that could have been a D&D "Death Spell" or "Powerword Kill." I'm sure that these guys have access to magic like that, right? That is, you could have said that the contest was to survive. But you didn't. Instead you did something more plausible.

Second, they get to see that no matter how bad the result of a contest, even if they go so heroic as to attack an Uber-Bad-Guy it doesn't mean that they lose their characters. Instead, they now have all the more reason to hate the bad guys. They've lost something, and lost it in play (far more potent than losing something in the background). And they now see that you're not fudging die rolls - which means that even though this is a major metaplot baddie, that they could have killed it if they'd been prepared correctly. Losing like this actually gives the players some hope. Six Masteries seems like too much to overcome, but it's not - Josh, a player in my FTF game, nearly defeated a 10W5 resistance recently. Took a ritual with a ton of community support, and getting together all of the best stuff for it, but he had a shot at it. His failure was spectacular.

With a little more experience, a band of heroes might manage to take one of these guys down (in fact you might want to seriously consider at least 6 Masteries).

Lastly, they're in deeper trouble than they were before, meaning that more plot just has to happen. And they have some new goals like dispelling the mark, or regenerating an arm, or finding a dramatic replacement for the follower. The failure gives them something to do, something that the players will want badly.

QuoteI've never run NPCs as obstacles to information by default, yet the flow of information in my games has always been somewhat lacking.  All those NPCs sitting around waiting only to be asked ...
I simply hadn't given them good enough motives to spill the beans.

Good analysis. Yes, don't ever trust that players will think to ask. Make sure that the NPCs tell, whether asked or not. Oh, give the players a chance to ask (makes em feel smart), but then have the NPCs grab the heroes and spill their guts if they're not asked.

What's key about this is that, not only do the players have more information to work on, but you can make the NPC demands interesting. Basically they should set up do or don't dillemas that say something about the character.

Mike

At the risk of people missing the post directly above this one, I'm posting again.

There are some other D&D assumptions that need to be checked at the door of HQ Midnight, IMO. For example, I was reading somthing that someone posted about the setting and their comment was something like "Lots to do without ever having to meet up with a Night King." Much less Izrador, I expect. I can see the reasoning - if they killed these guys, then they'd be unemployed as monster slayers, right?

Which left me thinking, what the hell?

The source material for the setting is LotR, right?
Izrador = Sauron
Night Kings = Nazgul
Orcs = Orcs
Right?

Let's see, what happens in the source story?
- Very human characters stop onslaught of huge army? Check.
- Hobbit and sheildmaiden of Rohan personaly slay the head Nazgul? Check.
- Two other Hobbits personally take on the incarnation of Sauron, by trying to destroy it. And do? Check.

This is my advice. Pick an approximate number of sessions that you want this game to go. You're goal is then to have Izrador dead by the end of that length. No other overall goal will suffice for this setting.

BTW, for the Dark Suns setting that Scott has worked up? Same thing, a complete saving of the world is what's appropriate? What, it's a D&D setting made to be infinitely adversarial to the PCs? Well, then why did they put all of the darkness/sacrifice/redemption theme into the setting? And why can't we use HQ to finally effect it?

Put another way, I wonder how many players actually got the chance to play out "winning" the Dark Sun campaign in D&D. And of those that did, how many played by the rules?

Thank goodness for Hero Quest.

I mean, I've played in a lot of settings like this. And when you start, you create a character, and think, "Huh, wouldn't it be cool if this guy someday ended up saving the world? Nah, he's just a newb, he'll never do that?" (sound like a kid from Tatoine, before his aunt and uncle get killed, anyone?) You might even want to play off this feeling, and not tell the players that your goal is for them to kill Izrador or whatever. But the point is that in D&D, the "Nah" is correct unless you plan to play the fifteen years it takes, fudging all the close contests it'll take to get the PC to high enough level to anti-climactically slay the big bad guy.

With HQ, it's more than plausible, it's going to happen if you play it out with that intent. Personally I would shoot for 40 sessions tops.

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesThis is my advice. Pick an approximate number of sessions that you want this game to go. You're goal is then to have Izrador dead by the end of that length. No other overall goal will suffice for this setting.

Well, you could also have the opposite -- to have all resistance stomped out. Or to bring all the gods back, so Izrador is only one among many...

But Mike's basic point here is solid. HQ can work for the kind of endless play where your freebooter characters sail around the world having adventures, but it works best for dramatic play where characters can bring about real and lasting change to the setting. It's much easier to see an extended contest as being worth it if the contest is over Zardix's redemption.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had last week with one of the players in my HQ Song of Ice and Fire game. It went like this:

Him, "So I have a small fleet right?"

"Right."

"And I know Danny, right?"

"Yep"

"So what happens if I give her and her Dorthaki a ride across the narrow sea? Wouldn't that fuck up the world?"

"Well first you have to do it, which is going to be a big contest."

"Yea, I'd think so."

"And if you fail, things get interesting. But if you succeed then they get even more interesting. I mean really, what happens if Danny lands in Westros just after Rob dies?"

"Jebus. That'd... wait, are you saying I could actually do that?"

"Yes."

"I think I'm going to like this game."

Quote from: Brand_RobinsThe third point is the hardest to deal with, I think. Like a court case, nothing so influences the outcome of a game as precedent. Changing it is very difficult, but luckily the methods are usually pretty simple – and you've already started doing them. It sounds, from your posts, like you've already had discussions with the players about why you want to change this for your game. That's step number one.

You bet. I've also started drifting the game from its original hard-Gamist approach (trying to cater to what I perceived to be the group's wishes) towards a style I'm more comfortable with.  That wasn't too appreciated by some players who wanted "their DnD" and I lost two players in the process - but I've had incredibly rewarding feedback, too, sometimes from quite unexpected directions.  

QuoteYou've also started analyzing your own play style. That's step number two. Step number three is to keep doing both of those things.

Keep talking to them, keep analyzing and figuring things out, and keep reinforcing the changes that you want to make. It takes a lot of energy and patience, as most of us have a tendency to collapse into what is familiar and default out, but if you keep at it and your players are willing it will work in the long run. You'll set new precedents, and then you'll be able to run from those. [/quote]

I mean to.  Thanks for the encouraging words.  Your examples of "cool failure" especially are helping me a lot.

Quote...I told them that they could count on losing contests in this game at least once a session or so. They immediately became concerned that their characters would be stripped of their cool, that their protagonist role would be removed, and that they'd never be able to advance or grow the characters. They also were afraid that losing would make them unable to effect of change the world, which leads into your first point – if we lose, how can we win the war?

Yup exactly.  These two things seem to be linked to one another - and looking at it purely from the paradigm of the DnD system, rightly so.  

QuoteWith my group I was able to show them the way around this by going to the novels we were basing the game off of.  

The published Midnight material has "heroes" always losing. The game developers stress on every other page that even if the PCs happen to win a victory, they need to be shown that the price they and/or others pay for it was higher than the gain.  In Midnight as written, a contest lost is a failure - and a contest won is also a failure, potentially a worse one.
I've warned my players about this from the outset and we all agree that "Losing Sucks and Winning Also Sucks" isn't our game - but, as I'm only realising now, discarding the Midnight story paradigm has left us with a bit of a vacuum story-wise.  

It isn't as we haven't been talking about what the game _should_ be about, there's lots of goals - but somehow the dimension of "how is this going to be a cool story" is missing a bit.  

QuoteHowever there are plenty of examples of how losing a contest does not mean you lose the war in film, literature, and history. Getting your players to look at these and really think about how they apply to their characters and the story they are telling may give you a chance to draw out the dramatic potential in failure. They also can help you as a GM by showing you how to stage failure so that it doesn't de-protagonize the PCs.

Yup you're right, I need to build a pool of "lose battle, win war" events from stories (fictional or non).

QuoteLet us look for a moment at Braveheart. It's a good match for your campaign, I think, being a movie about a poor man's rebellion against the more powerful, entrenched, and duplicitous powers that are unjustly ruling his country. (It also has more to do with fantasy than history, but I'll leave that rant aside.)

Agreed.  (And agreed.  Then again, it's a Mel Gibson film, so what did we expect...)  

Which makes me think.  Maybe I've been overlooking a "cool tragedy" factor in our game.  The players have always tended to say that they expected their PCs to die horribly.  
Part of that was because Midnight doesn't give easy access to resurrection spells, which are needed on a daily basis in default DnD games at higher levels - and the way we were playing Midnight, combat was happening a lot.  

But there might also be an underlying pattern that contributed to this "we will all die" view, in the sense of "We will win this war even if we all die".  If that makes any sense. Something I'll need to sound out my players about.  

QuoteAlso, watch the scenes as a GM. In every case where Willy fails it is because of circumstances he couldn't control. He doesn't make a dork of himself in failure, he doesn't do things so stupid that you think he deserves to die, he doesn't ever chicken out, run away, or plain give up.

Hm, not sure how I could prevent players from making stupid mistakes at times. (I do make stupid mistakes when I play, not meaning to sound superior.)  :)  

Regarding situations s character can't control, I've been pretty careful about how I present challenges so that players wouldn't feel cheated and grow paranoid.  My players have had some pretty bad roleplaying experiences in other groups. I've heard GM abuse-of-power stories from some of them, which are all the scarier because the players in question didn't notice the abusive dimension, they were merely "describing that GM's style".  I'm not exactly a GM known for screwing over players, yet it's taken me an eternity to build a comfortable level of trust with this group.  

The flip side of all this is that many, even the majority of defeats the PCs have suffered in this game have in fact resulted from a bad decision on the players' part.  

Being very consistent in this was the only way I could see to work towards player trust, and I still wouldn't feel comfortable placing the group into inescapable "no-win" situations, at least not without asking for consent first.  

That doesn't mean I don't use twists or surprises (I do), but those I've used have been kinda inflated in the players' perception.  For instance, after two instances in which intel for missions behind enemy lines turned out to be outdated or inaccurate once the PCs arrived at their target location, the NPC who offered those missions and gave the intel was labelled "incompetent" and "untrustworthy" by most of the group, and one player (who has since left our group) refused to have any further dealings with this NPC.  In both cases the PCs realised in time they were acting on the wrong information and adapted, so thinking in challenge terms they beat the challenge, and thinking in story terms they dealt with an unexpected turn of events in a cool and dramatic fashion.  Yet there's only one player in the group who's never had any problem with this at all.  

I'm saying this not to complain - in many ways this is the most exciting game I've ever run and the players have a big part in that - but to try and describe one way I feel hampered a bit in providing what I'd call opportunities.  

Maybe I'm painting myself into a corner needlessly here.  Is there something big I'm overlooking?