Suspense in RPGs

Umbran · Jun 20, 2018

pemerton said:
Thoughts? What do we have to do in a RPG to force the players, in the play of their PCs, to "buy victory"?

Pain. Possibly death.

Have you ever played Dread? It works on the premise of delaying the inevitable - but the inevitable thing isn't success, but dramatic failure.

In Dread you have a tower of Jenga blocks. If you need to determine if something is successful, rather than roll a die, you pull a block and put it on top, just like you were playing Jenga. If the tower falls, bad things happen. In the core/basic version, the last character that made a draw dies. In other variations I have seen, it is a pretty catastrophic failure. And we know, as the game progresses, that tower *will* fall, eventually.

So, the thing they aren't putting off is a win, but a major loss. And yes, this does build suspense. But you pretty much know what the cost will be, the only questions are when, and who.

pemerton · Jun 20, 2018

Les Moore said:
One way to preserve suspense is for a PC to get killed, occasionally. Sure it happens more in the lower levels, but when
a higher level character buys it, it preserves the integrity, suspense, and overall rewarding outcome of the game.

I'm not sure how this generates suspense - especially if it is predictable!

I can see that it might generate tension - "Is my PC going to die as a result of this?" - but that in and of itself, without more, doesn't seem to generate suspense (eg if the player can just bring in a new PC of roughly the same functionality, then what cost has been paid?).

pemerton · Jun 20, 2018

billd91 said:
I keep thinking of the late scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious. Cary Grant is with Ingrid Bergman and they have to escape her Nazi husband who has been poisoning her. But they keep drawing out the scene even though we've also seen her husband and his Nazi cronies and we know that if they don't get a move on and get out of the house both of them are in deep trouble. So there's this massive tension and you wonder if they will escape in time or she will die of the poison.

But isn't this a bit like Vincent Baker's example of Babe? We're pretty sure, aren't we, that Ingrid Bergman will survive - so what exactly is generating the suspense?

That's not to object to the sorts of reveals (and cut scenes?) that you mention in your post, only to wonder more about how they're related to the generation of suspense.

Another issue has to do with making a RPG work - which is what I was trying to get at with [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] upthread. If the players fail their check, and so they don't get out of the house and get found by the Nazis, how does this feed into the maintenance of suspense? How does the scope for paying further costs get introduced into the play of that game at that moment?

pemerton · Jun 20, 2018

Umbran said:
Pain. Possibly death.

Have you ever played Dread? It works on the premise of delaying the inevitable - but the inevitable thing isn't success, but dramatic failure.

In Dread you have a tower of Jenga blocks. If you need to determine if something is successful, rather than roll a die, you pull a block and put it on top, just like you were playing Jenga. If the tower falls, bad things happen. In the core/basic version, the last character that made a draw dies. In other variations I have seen, it is a pretty catastrophic failure. And we know, as the game progresses, that tower *will* fall, eventually.

So, the thing they aren't putting off is a win, but a major loss. And yes, this does build suspense. But you pretty much know what the cost will be, the only questions are when, and who.

I've never played Dread, but have read quite a bit about it.

Looked at through the lens of Baker's blog post, I want to say (as you do) that we all know that the Jenga tower will eventually collapse, if enough pulls are made. So the suspense is not in relation to the outcome, but rather in relation to what might be achieved or avoided prior to that outcome coming about. (I would say that Sanity in CoC might play a similar role.) So I'm not sure this is about pain/death being a cost that is to be paid, but rather a different way in which the inevitable is postponed.

Aldarc · Jun 20, 2018

pemerton said:
But what have you got in mind? Eg what sorts of structures for framing challenges will lead to choices to buy victory?

For example, how do you establish stakes or buy-in?

Have you read The Black Cauldron (book 2 of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain? The book has a fairly easy setup of the stakes as there are two objectives and each come with stakes and prices for success:
1) Find and Retrieve the Cauldron
2) Destroy the Cauldron

The Big Bad is basically producing undead minions via the Black Cauldron. The plot revolves around ragtag group of heroes retrieving this Cauldron and trying to destroy it for the sake of the war effort. Eventually they find the cauldron in the possession of witches who refuse to relinquish it without a cost. Stake #1: What possession are you willing to sacrifice to retrieve it? Everyone offers something of great value, which are all rejected up until main character realizes that he needs to pay with a deceased friend's brooch of oracles that he has inherited. He naturally does not want to give this up, but for the sake of the mission...

Then he learns how to destroy the Cauldron: One must knowingly and willingly crawl in the Cauldron to die. Now we have Stake #2: Who will sacrifice their life to destroy the Cauldron? You the GM control all the non-PCs. Could you have one of the NPCs do it? Sure. But where is the fun in that?

The victory conditions are fairly simple and the heroes winning is inevitable. But the unknown pertains to "who will pay the costs of victory and how?"

Imaculata · Jun 20, 2018

pemerton said:
Looked at through the lens of Baker's blog post, I want to say (as you do) that we all know that the Jenga tower will eventually collapse, if enough pulls are made. So the suspense is not in relation to the outcome, but rather in relation to what might be achieved or avoided prior to that outcome coming about. (I would say that Sanity in CoC might play a similar role.) So I'm not sure this is about pain/death being a cost that is to be paid, but rather a different way in which the inevitable is postponed.

I think the general gameplay idea in CoC is also similar (and not just the Sanity system). Call of Cthulhu will often have choices where character death is highly likely, and the players have to make a difficult choice whether the reward is worth the risks. In Call of Cthulhu, much like Dread, defeat is ultimately pretty much guaranteed. Your character will probably die horribly, or go insane.

This reminds me of an entertaining situation that came up during a CoC campaign I ran:

The players snuck into a house of a crazy cultist at night, when they heard an odd sound coming from upstairs; the sound of a piece of furniture moving slightly. It was a classic moment where they knew they were about to do something incredibly foolish and dangerous, but it was just too tempting... they had to know what was upstairs.

In any ordinary role playing game, they would have shrugged and went in to explore. But in CoC they knew that any confrontation with a monster would most likely be the end of their character, and that raises the suspense immensely. Much like in a horror movie, I described their slow ascend up the stairs, while taking my time to stretch out the suspense of the scene. Then all of a sudden I played the loud sound of a chiming clock to startle them all.

Manbearcat · Jun 20, 2018

I’ll bring up the play example for Dogs that I often cite.

When the player in my home game puts “My brother is my hero” on his character sheet and his Relationship attribute has both helping and complicating dice, everyone at the table knows that something inconvenient to a happy/tidy future is going to happen with his brother.

The suspense-inducing questions are:

“When?”

And when I do ultimately put his hat on the foyer table of a brothel where cattle rustlers are partaking of entertainment, the question turns into “what?”

Then, once we find out what “what” is, the question becomes “what now (and what cost or what are we willing to risk)?”

Umbran · Jun 20, 2018

pemerton said:
Looked at through the lens of Baker's blog post, I want to say (as you do) that we all know that the Jenga tower will eventually collapse, if enough pulls are made. So the suspense is not in relation to the outcome, but rather in relation to what might be achieved or avoided prior to that outcome coming about. (I would say that Sanity in CoC might play a similar role.) So I'm not sure this is about pain/death being a cost that is to be paid, but rather a different way in which the inevitable is postponed.

With respect, I don't get at all what you are saying here.

In Dread, success is not inevitable. Neither is failure. In that, I'm deviating form your OP, which posits that we consider that success is inevitable.

In Dread, the inevitable thing is the fall of the tower. Death happens when the tower falls. Death does not postpone the fall - the player does not say, "rather than pull this last brick, I will choose to die instead". The player may choose to die, rather than pull, but they knock over the tower in the process. The tower falls, the character dies. The tower is reset, and the game continues. The suspense is in how long the inevitable can be delayed, and on who the hammer will fall.

And, if death itself is not considered a price, then perhaps our priorities are a tad askew, hm?

Blue · Jun 20, 2018

Tony Vargas said:
Obviously, the PCs buy victory with the currency of limited resources: in D&D, spell slots; in FATE, FATE points; in Storyteller pools/tracks (BP, Willpower, Humanity)...

Just to add to your list, players buy victory with a lot of non-mechanical currency as well. Trading in that favor they are owed. Accepting loss of face to the court to beg the king to intervene. Promising an open-ended favor to an honorable villain for him to withdraw his support from the irredeemably evil big bad. Sacrificing themselves to allow the ritual to be stopped and the world saved.

Les Moore · Jun 20, 2018

pemerton said:
I'm not sure how this generates suspense - especially if it is predictable!

I can see that it might generate tension - "Is my PC going to die as a result of this?" - but that in and of itself, without more, doesn't seem to generate suspense (eg if the player can just bring in a new PC of roughly the same functionality, then what cost has been paid?).

It re-enforces the idea that the players are going into a dangerous environment, which helps foster the suspense, by
stressing the urgency. If everybody thinks their characters are going to be safe, play gets boring. You absolutely DON't want to
kill characters predictably, that would be a contest between boring and annoying. But, from time to time, a character, upon making a hurried or badly thought out action simply needs to pay the ultimate price for their careless play.

As a DM, the best thing to do, IMO, to mitigate these cases, is when a character pushes the die button, jump on it. What cost has been paid? The PC loses a developed character, and has to start from zero.
It's not about punishment, so you don't really want to severely penalize a player, anyway.

Suspense in RPGs

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Les Moore

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