Character Death

Well I'm reading Mote in Gods Eye again and it made me think about a very important bit of storytelling. Killing characters. You see in many RPG's there's a unwritten rule, ok sometimes it's even written, that you shouldn't kill characters off. It's not fair or something. Ok this is not true for every game but many of them. The problem with this is that if the players think their characters can't die they can get a bit cocky. Bad plan.

Now I'm all for not killing characters most of the time. Dead characters can't be tortured, find out the villian is their father, lose everything or be arrested. Dead characters are generally boring. But character death can be important to a story, bear with me here I've got a thread.

One of the best Drama series made recently was Spooks, one of the reasons it was so good was the way the production team completely messed with the viewers heads via their preconceptions. There is a rule of TV series, if someone is named in the title credits then they don't die. If a major character is going to leave you get a huge amount of run up to it, often you get adverts about it. So when the Spooks team killed off a character who was named and pictured in the credits you could hear jaws dropping across the country. Up until her head was shoved in the deep fat fryer (which despite the complaints you really don't see) the viewers were convinced our heroes would save the day. They didn't, she died, the story went on with everyone no aware of the ground rules. Yes they can die.

Compare this to classic Star Trek, yep people died all the time, but you had no idea who they were. They were the unamed red shirt who you had never saw before. Yawn. Or Revenge of the Sith. Sure lots of jedi died, but you knew they they were going to die. Now if they'd killed Obi Wan Kenobi that would have been cool.... Well shocking anyway.

My point. Running in from the idea of creating the characters during the first few sessions. Think about killing one of them in a heroic fashion, dying during character generation has a long history. Once the game gets going be a bit more lenient, temper your homicide with simple generic pain. But still leave the option of the two classic causes of death, heroic sacrifice and stupidity. Sometimes a character will sacrifice his life to save his friends, the GM may be tempted to reward this by not having them die... don't. Kill them, get them to start a new character, possibly with some bonus points. Maybe later they find out he or she didn't die, depending on your level of cliche but promise nothing.

And stupidity? Warn them their actions are stupid by all means. Most people have trained common sense that tells them not to play on the motorway but if they choose to continue with their idociy. Kill them. Maybe they will learn something, if they don't their friends will.

Beginnings

Random sort of thinking going on here. Have you ever noticed that Role Playing games very, very rarely start the same way that stories do? Oh at first glance they are similar, here are our heros, they know each other and are just about to be given something to do. Grand.

Except that's not how the game starts, the game starts a while (the length of said while can seriously differ depending on the game system) before with everyone sitting down and creating their characters.... Not always but most times. You have backgrounds, you have motivations, you a little bits of story wating to be woven into the tapestry. Which means either you first adventure (the important one for getting things going) is going to be bland and generic as the GM will prepare it before knowing your roles in the story or there will be a delay as the GM preps the story based on the character stories.

Ok this is not always true, GM's in their wisdom often cheat. Either constraining the character stories to fit the plot (generally recommended up to a point) or even given out specific background points to people.

But look at how many stories start, especially movies, within moments of starting stuff happens stuff that introduces the characters, often giving them a bit of time for themselves to shine. Then once the story has got going and everyone is interested in it you can fill in a bit more of the back story for the characters.

In some ways I think this is the best way to start a roleplaying game, just dive straight in. Paint the characters with braod strokes, refining the detail over the first few sessions, maybe reworking a few ideas after you've been playing for a bit.

My vision of how a game goes, especially of a game with people who have not played before would be to dive straight into the storytelling, introducing the rules and characters as things went on. This is one of the things I'd like to do with this game.

More later.

Tragedy and Consequences

Well my SSH connection just went down so time for more game thoughts.

Consequences

Every action has consequences, and failure often has bad consequences. The consequences of any action can be split into 3 groups, Physical, Mental and Storyline. For Physical and Mental consequences these range as follows:

Safe

No chance of taking any form of damage from this failure.

Risky

Lose one Body/Soul point per 5 full points you failed the task by.

Extreme

Lose one Body/Soul point per 4 full points you failed the task by. Take a level of Corruption/Corrosion for every 15 full points you failed the task by.

Insane

Lose one Body/Soul point per 3 full points you failed the task by. Take a level of Corruption/Corrosion for every 10 full points you failed the task by.

Dangerous

Lose one Body/Soul point per 2 full points you failed the task by. Take a level of Corruption/Corrosion for every 5 full points you failed the task by.

Deadly

Lose one Body/Soul point per 1 point you failed the task by. Take a level of Corruption/Corrosion for every 3 full points you failed the task by.

Story consequences are more fluid and include things like, get imprisoned, get lost etc.

For Extended tasks there will be two sets of consequences, partial failure consequences (what happens when you fail but have yet to give up) and total failure consequences (what happens when you finally admit failure). Partial failure consequences are generally not as bad as total failure consequences, once I get all this down I'm going to do some examples to explain it. currently I'm still just getting all the ideas out of my head.

Tragedy

A note on Tragedy points, these are kind of a Story point overdraft. If you need to spend a story point to affect a task outcome but you are all out you can gain a Tragedy point. You can gain any number of Tragedy points in one go, each one gives you a Story Point you have to spend on the task in hand. If oyu don't spend them they are lost (but the Tragedy points stay). So what's the downside? Well to get rid of a Tragedy Point you have to spend it when performing a task to fail that task. Not only do you fail that task but the GM is allowed to generally make you fail in the worst way possible. You can of course spend more than one point on a task, this just makes your failure even worse. Of course you can choose not to spend your Tragedy Points. Sit there laughing at fate amd karma. But the GM, much like you bank manager, can choose to close your overdraft at any time, spending all your Tragedy points at the most dramatically appropriate time. Best to take your punishment when you choose to.

Tasks : Expanded

Work network went down so I wrote this. More on this later.

One idea to get across is that most of the time characters are performing tasks, watch a child learning to walk and you soon realise how much you take everything you do for granted. Thus in many situations where you have to complete a task you are instead dealing with an increase of the task difficulty, this is know as Task Acceleration. when a Task Accelerates your character becomes aware that the normally second nature task has become harder. Sometimes this is all that happens, the new target number is still less than the previous number, you simply become aware of the change. Other time though you realise you are going to fail the task.

At this point you can expend effort by spending Body or Soul points to add a second trait to the task or spend story or legend points to turn the story your way. In each of these cases the initial Trait and Specialisms used will be decided by the GM, normally it will be quite obvious.

There are two main kinds of task.

Simple Tasks

This is when you are trying to do something and have a limited time to do it in. You effectively have one chance to beat the target number given. If you fail this chance you have to accept the consquences of your failure.

Extended Tasks

In this case you can attempt to repeatedly perform the task. If you fail to perform the task on your first attempt you suffer the consequnces of failing but can then attempt to keep trying. To do so you can spend extra effort or story points to add additional traits or specialisms to your current task number. you can keep doing rounds of failure and effort as long as you do not count any trait or specialism more than once. If you eventually raise you total to beat the target number you finally succeed.

Core concepts

The core concept behind the game is to create a system for running story driven adventures. The system will be as generic as possible but will not strive for realism instead it will attempt to make sure that everyone involved can work together to create a story.

Non Randomness

I like games that don't have a random element, Amber is still for me one of the all time classic games. By removing the random element you can remove a lot of the system talk. The GM can simply tell a player if they think they are going to succeed or fail. Then the player can try to change this result, either by effort or by serendipity.

Whilst I want to remove the elements of system talk I'm sticking with number for character stats and task numbers. I thought initially about having a system using words, but I figure that people understand numbers. At least at the basic addition, subtraction and comparison level. you can have a system that uses number without having to call them out all the time... I think.

Naming

Names are important, by choosing evocative names for things you give them a certain weight. One importat change from the initial text below is Story Points. You now have Story points, which where temporary story points, and Legend points, which were permanent story points. Plus there are Tragedy points. More on those later.

Tonight I plan to explain the thoughts I have for opposed tasks and ongoing task. Plus adding a system for describing task danger, and the ability to reduce it even if you are going to fail.

Why I'm doing this

I've been gaming for a long time, since I got a copy of D&D for my 8th brithday. During that time I've wirtten the odd system as a hobby as well as created a few campaign worlds. Sometimes they've even been quite good. Recently though I've been a bit down, I was getting to the point that gaming just didn't appeal to me any more. I was thinking of giving it all up. Mainly as part of my give up on everything plan I seemed to have been working on.

This is not a good plan, so when a few days ago I can up with much of a game system design while driving home I thought. Yes! I must do something with this or I'll just have to give up on gaming. So this is what I'm doing. My plan is to develop the game here, explaining my ideas behind things and listening to readers comments. Then once I'm ready I'll make it available as a PDF.

The idea I have is for the game system to be released under something similar to the OGL. Whereby anyone can add to the system but have to make their additions available for other people to use. Also anyone will be able to use the system for their own games, this would be cool.

What has come before.

Below is the first post I did about this to Livejournal. Some bits have been changed in the great melting pot that is my brain but I wanted to post this so everything is in one place.

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A person is split into two relms the body and the soul. Within each realm you have three traits Strength, Dexterity and Physique for Body and Knowledge, Will and Wits for Soul. People also have specialisms and complications, these make tasks easier and harder. The value of each realm is the total of the traits within that realm, the realm values provide a pool of points that are used for task resolution.

Traits range from 1 upwards with the average person having a value of 5 for each trait. Specialisms provide a bonus depending on their focus, a broad specialism gives a +3 bonus for all relavant tasks, e.g. Driving cars gives +3 to all car driving related tasks. A more focused specialism gives +4 for tasks related to the focus but +2 for other relevant but not specificaly focused tasks, e.g. a Driving Performance Cars gives +4 for driving high powered cars but +2 for other cars as the driver will be expecting the car to react differently. A tightly focused specialism gives +5 for related tasks but +1 for others, eg Drive Formula One car gives +5 for formula one cars but only +1 for others. If multiple specialisms can be used for a test the testee can select which is being used.

Complications provide a -3 penalty for any situation they are relevant to, complications do stack.

Tasks Resolution:
Each task has a difficulty. Sample difficulties are listed below:

• 1 - 4 Simple. Anyone can do this without even thinking about it.
• 5 - 8 Average. Most people can do this without any effort, some may struggle if they have never dealt with the tasks before.
• 9 - 12 Taxing. A hard task for the untrained but a specialist should have no problem.
• 13 - 16 Extreme. A specialist will be working hard to perform this without error.
• 17 + Heroic. Unattainable by the average man...

Doing something:
To do something describe to the GM the trait you wish to use to use along with any specialism you think is relevant. They will advise you on whether you think you will succeed based on the target number, the specialism, and relevant complications and any bonus for task description. If you think you are going to fail you can choose to exert yourself by spending a point from your Body or Soul pools. Select a second trait and explain how you are exterting yourself to bring this trait into play. The GM adds this trait to the first result plus a bonus or penalty based on the description of relavance. If the final total equals or beats the task target number the taks succeeds, if not it fails.
Wow.

Examples:
Tod is driving to work, on his regular morning commute. This is a Dexterity + Driving task with a value of 7. As he has a dexterity of 5 and a Driving Specialism he can do this every day. Lucky Tod.</p>

The GM decides today is not a good day, it a raining hard making the actions of the other cars unpredictable. He raises the target number to 12 and informs od he thinks the drive in is a bit harder today. In fact as he is approaching a particularly difficult junction a car swerves in front of him wildly. At this point unless Tod does something he is failing the test, badness will ensue.

"Luckily I react in time to avoid the car!" Tod cries Spending a Soul point and using his Wits to react to the incident. Tods Wits are 5 giving him a total of 13 just enough to succeed. The GM decided his description was average and so wasn't worthy of a bonus or penalty so the task does succeed.

But what if Tod had said "I'll spend a Soul point to add my Wits to the task". Wow... That's exciting, The GM decides that this inspiring piece of description is worth a -3 pentaly. The ensuing car accident should add some excitement to the game.

On the other hand if Tod had said "Swearing grimly I yank the steering wheel hard to the left while the tyres squeal, praying that they grip I narrowly avoid the idiot in front of me." and spends a Body point to use is Strength trait of 5 the GM could give a +3 bonus for good description. Not only does Tod succeed but he does so with style.

Doing things with style:
Anyone can succeed at a task. Generally a character will spend most of his day succeeding at tasks without any effort. Sometimes a task will prove more difficult than expected and exertion is required. And sometimes you have to do something with style. If you succeed at a task but only just then you have to accept the GM's view of what happened. If you succeed by 3 or more points you succeed with style and can dictate how you did it. The more you succeed by the more stylish you can be. Yes, this is not very exact, style is about forwarding the story, a success with style should not have any major effects that a simple success did not. It may allow for a minor extra effect.. (More details on this once I've tested it a bit). Also it earns you a temporary story point.

Failure:
Sometimes you fail at things. This can have a number of effects depending on the task in question. The simplest effect is the story moves in the direction of the task failing. The failing character may also lose body or soul points depending on how badly they failed. A good rule of thumb is one body or soul point should be removed for each full 3 points they fail by. In most cases the player can choose which to lose but sometimes the GM may do so instead.

If a player runs out of Body or Soul points they are physically or mentally exausted and in trouble. They can no longer spend points from the appropriate pool to exert themselves. If they have to lose points from an exhauted pool they instead gain a point of Corruption for the body Realm or Corrosion for the Soul realm.

Certain tasks can cause Corruption or Corrosion directly if they are failed, generally if a task fails by more than 10 points the character takes a point of Corruption or Corrosion depending on the task AS WELL as the Body and Soul reduction.

Corruption and Corrosion:
Corruption and Corrosion represent the ongoing damage a person takes through life. Each time a character gains a point of Corruption or Corrosion they gain a new complication, this complication should have a link to how the point was gained. If a characters Corruption points level ever equals their Body realm they die. If their Corrosion points level equals their Soul realm thet suffer a complete incurable mental collapse.

Removing Corruption requires weeks of medical attention, the sooner after the event that caused it the better. Removing Corrosion requires lengthy periods of psychactric counselling. Removeing a point of Corruption or Corrosion does not remove the complication that arose from it.

Story Points
There are two types of story points, temporary story points and permanent story points. You can spend story points to have a number of effects, once a temporary story point has been spent it is gone, permanent story points return like body and soul point (which I'll explain in a bit). Effects of spending a story point:

• Avoiding Corruption/Corrosion spend 5 story points to avoid gaining a point of corruption or corrosion. This has to be done at the point the corruption or corrosion is recieved.
• Removing a complication. Spend 10 story points and give a story for how the complication is to be removed. The GM must either agree and work this into the sotry line (the complication will be removed at the appropriate point) or refuse and refund the story points.
• Gaining a specialism. Spend 5 points to gain a broad specialism. Spend 5 points to narrow a broad specialism or 7 to keep the broad specialism and gain a related narrow specialism. spend 5 points to tightly focus a narrow specialism or 7 to keep to narrow specialism and gain the tight specialism.
• Affecting task outcomes. Spend 1 story point instead of a body or soul point for extertion. Spend 1 story point to include a second related specialism into the task (Driving + Performance Car Driving). Spend 2 story points to include a third trait into the task resolution. Spend 5 story points to gain a simple +3 bonus.

Players should note all story points spent to affect a task outcome. Once 50 points have been spent in this way they gain a permanent story point. Once you start taking part in the story you become more relevant to it.

Temporary story points are given to all players at story relevant points, 5-10 points should be given to each player for each major scene of a story.

Recovery.
1 hours rest will regain 1 point of either Body, Soul or Permanent Story. Rest can include doing tasks for relaxation in order to increase one of the other pools. For example Tod goes for an hour long walk, this helps to calm his mind regaining a point of Soul he lost during the days office work, later he paints a watercolour regaining one body point.

Hmmmm

Have you ever done something seriously on the spur of the moment? WellI guess this is one of those things. I wanted to post a comment, on a blog I don't normally read but had found in a link from sonewhere else. But I had to be logged into blogger to use it. And I did'nt have a blogger account. Now I do.

Ithink I'm going to use it for my more technical posts and reserve my existing Livejournal for personal stuff. This way all my non technical friends don't have to put up with me confusing them.

More soon I hope.