Of Mooks, Plot Armor, and ttRPGs

[The Shadow]

This is the point, that the structure of the game is to provoke dramatic situations and react to them, while my impulse would be to avoid them, or attempt to minimize their impact. It is a game calibrated to produce a specific kind of result that doesn't rely on all players striving to "win" in the way that so called "gamist" games so. There's a different bargain at the table and a different set of assumptions in the magical circle about behavior and decision making.

Okay, now I get you. (I wasn't at all clear what the 'this' was in your post, or who it was that was doing the optimizing!)

Yep, it's an entirely different approach. As a Fate player, you kind of want bad things to happen to your character. And you and the GM share responsibility for the world in a way which is very alien to more traditional kinds of RPG. Here's a memorable example that actually happened in our game:

GM: "Okay, you guys have just personally angered the Demon God/dess of Forbidden Delights. S/he lays a curse on you to act out your inhibited desires. Roll Will."
Me: "Yeesh, not with that roll!" (And it was near the end of the session, so I was flat out of Fate points.)
GM: "Feel free to self-Compel."
Me: "Hmm. Well, Shade is all about planning a job carefully and professionally. How about I pull a heist solo with no prep at all - just for the thrill of the thing?"
GM: "I dunno... It doesn't seem bad enough..."
Me: "I'll rob the Mayor's private vault!" (Thereby establishing that she had one! It had never come up before.)
GM: "Oh my GOD!! Here, take two Fate points, you'll need them!"

We proceeded to off-the-cuff do the heist, which was incredibly tense. My character (Shade) came within a hair's-breadth of capture multiple times. He escaped by the skin of his teeth with both money and vital information, and yes, I had to spend both of those Fate points to pull it off. (And before anyone asks, yes, failure and capture were very much on the table.) It was extremely satisfying!

It's the only game I've encountered in which you open a safe and the GM asks, "Okay, you succeeded with style - do you want there be a LOT of money in there, or a satisfying amount and also some juicy papers?" (We go for the juicy papers every single time!)

 

[Manbearcat]

* - thinking here of @Manbearcat 's cocoon-spitting (moose? elk?) from another thread.

Dark-underfoot Corrupted Ceirwmawr
Solitary, huge, terrifying, fearless, corrupted

HP 16; Armor 0
Damage:
Antler thrash d10+1 (reach, forceful, corruption)
Trample d10+3 (reach, forceful, area, corruption)
Corrupting Spray d8 (near, grabby, corruption, reload, no armor applies)

Special Quality: Corrupted Antlers (instead of prismatic, awe-inspiring antlers)
Instinct: To spread the scarlet corruption

* Toss aside a barrier or foe

• Aggressively display its beautiful and terrible antlers
• Isolate a competitor, dominate the rut
• Entomb in corrupted mucus

 

[bloodtide]

There has got to be some disconnect here, because for the life of me I don't see how these sentences, and even clauses, lead to each other.

How does "the PCs won't die" equate to "the players succeed"? Surely it's possible for the party to live, yet utterly fail in their objectives?

They are seperate, just related.

How does "no character death" equate to "ignore hit points"? Surely one can track hit points, leading to one or more characters unconscious on the ground, and not have their contribution to the fight, without in any way requiring them to die? Which might mean the entire party gets defeated and captured!

If a player character can not ever die, why waste the time with hit points. Even when you get to -100 hit points, you will just keep playing the game.

Where did this agreement allegedly happen, in which it was determined that everything the PCs did would be right and they can't fail? Because that seems to me to be entirely orthogonal to whether the PCs can die or not.

I'm not seeing how or why you're equating these things.

Normally session zero.

In particular, I can't work out what it is that you are contrasting with a fairly traditional approach to Tomb of Horrors or White Plume Mountain or whatever you are thinking of as "the adventure" that gets played through. You refer to a "play style" but it's not one I'm familiar with - you clearly don't adopt it, I don't know of anyone else who adopts it, so where is it found other than in your imagination?

Well, first off drop 1E view point.

the PCs failed - those who were pursuing a kidnapper failed to catch him; the one who was leading the defence of a castle against a siege failed in his leadership, and the castle fell to its besiegers; and then when all the PCs were trying to withdraw to their friendly castle, their enemies caught up to them just outside its walls.

Sure you can have failures other then death. And if the players care even a little about the fiction it might mean something for a couple seconds. There is a huge difference between "oh shucks my character did not catch the bad guy and he got away, oh well" and the bad guy gets away BY killing the character and the player sits their in horror. Same way when the Whole Group of characters die defending a castle it's a Big Deal, but when the characters "just loose the fight" and players just sit there and are like "darn".

 

[Blue]

Is a problem with emulating a lot of popular fiction using many ttRPGs that the main characters in the fiction typically have massive plot armor and most bad guys are mooks and go down easily - but the folks playing the game might not like having that be too obvious?

What about movies, comics, TV shows, and novels let's us get past that? What lets me ignore that Marshall Dillon will certainly live to be in the next episode of Gunsmoke, or that the entire 4077 won't be wiped out before the next episode of MASH. Does it need other stakes? Does it need to give enough other plot to to distract me? Does having a big character go down fairly early help (lots in GoT, once in a while in Black Company, Boromir in LotR, most people in the Silmarillion)? If main character death isn't a thing in the fiction, what makes the combat interesting? Does easy raise dead in D&D map to how unseriously super hero death in the comics is?

For IRL heroes, is it just that we're doing things in reverse. They're heroes we're reading about because we already know how it turned out? So, what makes us watch a story about a war hero where we know how it ends? Can one even have a historical emulation game where it is guaranteed to end with success in a similar manner to the original, or is there no game there?

M*A*S*H isn't a D&D game. The challenge of an episode aren't the main character solving problems with lethal force where a failure means their death. It's a frantic trade to get antibiotics, or confusing a high-ranked officer who will make trouble for the unit, or an escalating prank war, or someone losing their nerve to operate. Those are real stakes, and the ones that am RPG featuring those characters would need to focus on.

Once you reframe this to "what are the appropriate stakes for the fiction", the concept of "massive plot armor" isn't needed in a number of the cases.

 

[Cadence]

M*A*S*H isn't a D&D game. The challenge of an episode aren't the main character solving problems with lethal force where a failure means their death. It's a frantic trade to get antibiotics, or confusing a high-ranked officer who will make trouble for the unit, or an escalating prank war, or someone losing their nerve to operate. Those are real stakes, and the ones that am RPG featuring those characters would need to focus on.

Once you reframe this to "what are the appropriate stakes for the fiction", the concept of "massive plot armor" isn't needed in a number of the cases.

I'm trying to remember how often a visiting nurse or doctor or whoever on M*A*S*H ended up getting hurt enough to be sent home when the camp was being shelled or the like. The pranks and surgery don't require plot armor... but the entire back-drop makes it feel to me like some is there.

If M*A*S*H doesn't fit, I could transfer it over to Magnum PI, for example.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm trying to remember how often a visiting nurse or doctor or whoever on M*A*S*H ended up getting hurt enough to be sent home when the camp was being shelled or the like. The pranks and surgery don't require plot armor... but the entire back-drop makes it feel to me like some is there.

If M*A*S*H doesn't fit, I could transfer it over to Magnum PI, for example.

For me, if the game regularly involves you getting into fights where the other side is actively trying to kill you, they need to have a chance (even if it's a relatively small chance) to succeed, or I can't be bothered to care about it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Sure you can have failures other then death. And if the players care even a little about the fiction it might mean something for a couple seconds. There is a huge difference between "oh shucks my character did not catch the bad guy and he got away, oh well" and the bad guy gets away BY killing the character and the player sits their in horror. Same way when the Whole Group of characters die defending a castle it's a Big Deal, but when the characters "just loose the fight" and players just sit there and are like "darn".

When I have a PC who is utterly indifferent to the events of play, and that PC dies... I just say "oh, darn" and make a new one.

I think perhaps the problem you're seeing may be one you're contributing to.

 

[Umbran]

If a player character can not ever die, why waste the time with hit points. Even when you get to -100 hit points, you will just keep playing the game.

Well, death isn't the only consequence available, so death doesn't have to be the only possible result from hitting zero hit points.

In Fate, for example, when the character cannot absorb any more hits, and they didn't choose to Concede the conflict before they take that last hit, they get Taken Out. When a character is Taken Out, they are no longer able to impact the scene, and the one who took them out can narrate what happens to them.

Death is a pretty boring consequence in many ways, when there are so many other options available - maybe the character is just left lying there, forgotten. Maybe they wake up to find themselves in the middle of the desert with no gear. Maybe they wake up to find themselves in jail, charged with a crime they didn't commit. Maybe they get tossed over the castle wall and land just short of the moat and have a broken leg. Maybe they survive just fine, but the villain vows to spend their life making the PC's life a living Hell...

So many options.

 

[Lanefan]

I assume that it's obvious that it's not self-evident how this makes for good game play, or for better game play than the Prince Valiant sessions that I linked to upthread.

RPGs are games of shared fiction. In my experience, much of the excitement and emotional engagement comes from the content of that fiction. The possibility of the protagonist dying, or being turned into an ant, isn't the most exciting thing I can think of about a fiction. The possibility of losing my playing piece isn't the most exciting thing I can think of about in the context of participating in a game of shared fiction.

The possibility of losing my playing piece is what turns a situation from interesting to edge-of-the-seat interesting.

 

[Umbran]

I think perhaps the problem you're seeing may be one you're contributing to.

Yeah. While I suppose disinterest in events other than death is valid, it isn't a game I want to run.

Maybe the issue here isn't about whether or not the PCs can die, but how to get players to engage with the setting events enough to care about something other than PC death, so that isn't the only lever the GM can pull.