RPGing via Billy Bragg?

[AbdulAlhazred]

Cool thread @pemerton !

I just skimmed it and I saw this post and (given that I'm GMing this game) I thought I'd post a few comments about when should someone (both a player in a TTRPG and the PC embroiled in the conflicts and paradigm of the play) suspend their personal sovereignty for the collective and when should they put their foot down and express their own dramatic needs (to some extent; large or small) at the expense of the collective?

So where Blades in the Dark does have "personal Tier" is very interesting with respect to this question. Let us consider Takeo ( @AbdulAlhazred 's character in this Blades game) and how the rules of the game give expression to this "personal Tier."

Stash is one very important one. It is sort of a "personal score" number in Blades. It expresses lifestyle. Stash goes up by 1d at 11/21/40 dots (eg at 21 you have 2d worth of lifestyle). This is personal. You can (a) use this value as a means to make an Action Roll or a Fortune Roll during play when lifestyle is the important part of the test. Again, its also "your score." However, what players are perpetually tempted to do is liquidate Stash for Coin (at the cost of 2 : 1) in order to do various things in game; help out with a Crew Longterm Project, buy-up an Action Roll result (where that makes sense in the fiction), pay someone off outright and obviate an obstacle (where that makes sense in the fiction), or (personally) Train for xp, or buy-up an Acquire an Asset or Recover result.

The decision to liquidate or horde (for "score" or to increase lifestyle dice pool) is a personal one. The decision on what to spend that liquidated Coin from Stash is a personal one. But both the weight of the collective's needs is a persistent one (particularly when there are many threats in play...as there are now for this discussed game) and the downward social pressure of players upon other players (whether intentional or incidental).

The same thing happens with PC build where you have all manner of individual choices on "individual expression of Tier:"

* Should I put a Dot in x Action vs y Action? The inputs for this question are many and multifaceted. Going from a 0 to a 1 in an Action Roll is a huge deal in this game and it also increases your Resistance for that bin of stuff (either Insight, Prowess, or Resolve). But what about having a huge dice pool in Skirmish (like Takeo) and spreading myself thin on Prowess Resistance (signifying a very capable offensive character, but less so defensively...or at least a much more "living dangerously" character when on the defense)? There are many reasons why one might make this personal choice, some of them are expressions of sovereignty and some are downward social pressure of the group (in terms of removing liabilities or amplifying synergies).

* Should I push for an alternative to Weapons Quality Upgrade as a Crew Upgrade because I'm already personally very high in quality? Takeo has +1 Tier with his default suite of weapons due to his chosen playbook already. He also has Potency vs Supernatural due to PC build choice. When Assessing Factors vs supernatural, this puts him at +2 for Effect already (on top of the +2 for Crew). The Weapons Quality Upgrade suddenly puts him at +3 so now Takeo is walking around at +5 when Assessing Factors vs Supernatural (even mundane its +4)! In a great many cases, that is extreme overkill...but there are cases where it would absolutely help. An alternative Crew Upgrade would help Takeo in most situations while Weapons Quality Upgrade will only help in some (due to his already large number of factors).

* Consider the push for a Score to vanquish your own Vice Purveyor (the Demon embedded in your sword)! This "cost" a Score but it also cost you a Downtime Activity as now you have to establish a new Vice Purveyor! This was very personal. In the meta of play it was also a consideration however, as your demonic Vice Purveyor was starting to cause problems.

* Consider the NPC (shortly thereafter Friend and then quickly Cohort) Hajime who just entered play a bit ago due to a Devil's Bargain (due to the dramatic needs of the character expressed at PC build and during play). There are many decisions about her (and some still to come) that interact with personal sovereignty vs collective. Accepting that Devil's Bargain (that gave "life" to her) at all is one. Pushing for and then executing a Score (at the expense of the myriad other things a Score could have been spent upon...particularly considering all of the threats pressing in upon the Crew) to liberate her from her conditions is another. The decision to move her from Friend (which only bears out personal benefit) vs Cohort (which can/will bear out Crew benefit) is another. What about decisions to use her in a Score or an Action (Group or individual) when the risk is not insignificant that harm might come to her? What about you having Takeo take Leader (giving her +1 Effect and 1 Armor) vs another (perhaps more consistently useful or more powerful) Ability? What about your decision to begin a Longterm Project to uncover the shared past of your homeland (as it pertains to "how you got here" and The Unity War) vs spending Coin or default allowed DTAs or Stash on an alternative Downtime Action that gives expression to the collective's needs?

---

We could continue this exercise for you and your own character (there is more) and we could do this exact same exercise for each player in the Crew. There are many tensions around "personal Tier" (retention, growth, diminishment) vs "group Tier" and individual dramatic needs vs collective and assets spent or horded (and on what) in this game. We didn't even touch on The Faction Game here (who to try to seduce, who to try to destroy, what terrible entity to bring into this world and which one to foil)!

Right, within the crew, and at the interface of the crew with the milieu there is a pretty rich texture. The things you mostly mentioned above are stuff that is on Takeo's character sheet, but there's also some crossbleed there, and it has pretty large significance (friend vs cohort for example) and just the general tier of the PC being the same as the crew. The relation of the crew as a whole to the other factions in the game is, mechanically, a bit simpler, but there are a number of tools in place to give it greater texture where that makes sense, clocks, reputation keywords, faction keywords, and the specifics of who controls which claims. The totality of relations between all the factions and each other also exists in the fiction, though mostly its left to play, but each of the stock factions does list a few friends and foes. A good example of using that was the other day when I pointed out that The Hive was going to put its finger on us (in the form of the Crime Boss mechanic, demanding a LARGE cut of our take on the last score). I reasoned this would be a logical option simply based on skimming through the various factions and noting that they are the heavies in our crew's home turf, don't like the sorts of arcane hijinks we've been up to, and also seem to be hostile to at least one of our allies. Their description makes me think of them as a fairly 'status quo' group (they're powerful and derive their influence from their involvement in trade). The Wandering Souls OTOH are definitely out there 'breaking things'! I'd note however that there's no formal 'social structure' implied in a mechanical sense, particularly. I kind of drew that myself by thinking "how would rich merchants relate to lower class orphans turned power seekers?" Well, its pretty much 99% likely IMHO that in ANY society that would signal likely conflict! The merchants have much to lose and chaos is not good for business.

But I could see a game with a system that codified that in a more formal way. I would expect such a game would probably be focused more narrowly on social issues, maybe in a bit more realistic milieu than Doskvol.

 

[Baron Opal II]

HeroWars has a sophisticated framework. One mechanic, not frequently discussed, is that community support (or opposition) for a magical ritual provides a modifier. And why would anyone be performing a magic ritual? Usually to empower a quest or goal.

HeroWars definitely plays out on the stage RuneQuest set up. It's the first game I encountered that sets up a clash of cultures and social maneuvering with some rigor. One thing I appreciated about the setting is you have, among others, two iconic heroes- Argrath and Herrek. They have both accumulated the same amount of power, but Argrath shared it with his tribe and Harrek kept it all for himself. You see the results of those choices in a larger milieu.

As far as pointed social realism is concerned, the one I'm familiar with is Lancer. The default is that you're agents of a benevolent post scarcity society expanding their political hegemony. There aren't specific rules for that- it's actually rather rules light. That's not the only war to play, but it's an obvious theme.

 

[pemerton]

tradeoffs

I think this is part of the challenge for social realism in RPGing.

A lot of RPGing, like a lot of gameplay, is based around trade-offs. But social realist RPGing is inherently suspicious of trade-offs, because of their connection to ideology and the practices that it legitimates (eg wage labour).

@chaochou, does the HeroWars/Quest system for communities involve trade-offs in this sense? My hazy recollections/understandings don't include any, but as I posted above I've never tried to master it.

 

[Blue Orange]

I think this is part of the challenge for social realism in RPGing.

A lot of RPGing, like a lot of gameplay, is based around trade-offs. But social realist RPGing is inherently suspicious of trade-offs, because of their connection to ideology and the practices that it legitimates (eg wage labour).

@chaochou, does the HeroWars/Quest system for communities involve trade-offs in this sense? My hazy recollections/understandings don't include any, but as I posted above I've never tried to master it.

If there's no trade-off, (mechanically) better and worse options exist. That means everyone chooses the (mechanically) better option unless the game focuses heavily on role-playing. You wind up with all the characters being the same or doing the same thing.

 

[chaochou]

@chaochou, does the HeroWars/Quest system for communities involve trade-offs in this sense? My hazy recollections/understandings don't include any, but as I posted above I've never tried to master it.

In the sense that @Manbearcat mentions, yes it does - because Hero Points are a dual currency. You can spend them as XP to increase scores, relationships, start new skills - so they are the improvement currency. But you can also spend them for a mastery shift in a conflict (so equivalent to +20 in a conflict).

So there's a tension between putting maximum effort into winning this contest now but being long-term weaker, or accepting a greater risk of losing now but having better long-term prospects.

That's the key trade-off mechanic and (a bit like the BW improvement mechanics) it's a slow burn. You have to play a while to start to feel it.

 

[pemerton]

In the sense that @Manbearcat mentions, yes it does - because Hero Points are a dual currency. You can spend them as XP to increase scores, relationships, start new skills - so they are the improvement currency. But you can also spend them for a mastery shift in a conflict (so equivalent to +20 in a conflict).

So there's a tension between putting maximum effort into winning this contest now but being long-term weaker, or accepting a greater risk of losing now but having better long-term prospects.

That's the key trade-off mechanic and (a bit like the BW improvement mechanics) it's a slow burn. You have to play a while to start to feel it.

True, I forgot about hero points.

If there's no trade-off, (mechanically) better and worse options exist. That means everyone chooses the (mechanically) better option unless the game focuses heavily on role-playing. You wind up with all the characters being the same or doing the same thing.

I don't think this is true. Cthulhu Dark doesn't really involve any trade-offs, but doesn't produce the consequence you describe. The only real trade-offs in Prince Valiant are that when you choose a new skill, or choose to spend a Storyteller certificate, you can only take one option from the list. Again, in my experience it doesn't produce the consequences that you describe.

I guess there's an argument that having to choose which skill to improve makes it harder to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and be a critical critic after dinner, just as one has a mind. But even then I think Marx and Engel's focus was more on opportunity than on realised talent.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

So I've just been doing some blue sky thinking about ways to gamify social groups and their interactions. Below is a list of things I think could be considered when trying to define groups and their actions.

Stats for Groups

Type - social class, religion, economic interest, proximity (ie: a local community), sporting, government, political, criminal, military

Organisation - formal/informal?

Size

Cohesion – aka Class Consciousness. size reduces cohesion & makes it harder to increase cohesion.

Leadership – united, disparate, rivals, enemies

Support – where in the organisation does the leadership get its support? Esp. if there are rival factions within the leadership

Goals – a list of things the group would like to see happen, rated as “Common” (commonly shared throughout the group) to “uncommon” to “extreme” (shared by very few members of the group.) Each goal is also rated by importance.

Grievances – a list of things that group doesn’t want. Perhaps done as Goals but with negative scores as opposed to positive ones.

Wealth

Social Influence

Coercion (Internal)

Coercion (External)

Membership – individuals, other organisations, overlap

Affiliation – relationship with other social groups, which may be totally external, or totally internal, or a mix of both.

Interests - as per pemerton's example in post #49, below,

Tools to Manipulate Groups

Propaganda, including speechifying, media, zeitgeist? folk songs (because Billy Bragg!)

Bribery

Shared goals – use this to manipulate other social groups, by creating/manipulating areas of shared interest

Manipulation - Direct control of the actions of another group through blackmail, bribery, revolt/purge

Costs- what does an action cost the group? Money? Cohesion? Power? Home?

Thoughts

How far down do you want to dig? What level of granularity are you looking for for your game?

It occurred to me that one could just grab a copy of Steve Jackson's Illuminati (either version) and use that; maybe modified, maybe not, to reflect groups and their interactions.

EDITED: to add interest, as per @pemerton's suggestion. Also to add folk songs to the list of vectors for propaganda.

 

[gorice]

It strikes me that just having the broader social context effect rolls (which seems to be kind of what HeroQuest does?) would be a big thing. Couple that with some open-ended ability for the general mood or common sense to be shifted -- by events, or people's actions -- and you might get what you want. Dunno, needs more thought and then playtesting.

 

[pemerton]

@DrunkonDuty

What is missing from your list, and is (I think) important for social realist RPGing - and it's the same thing as I've been getting at with references to ideology and trade-offs - is an account of the groups' interests. Those figure in your list only if we equate a group's interests with what it wants - but part of the point of social realist media is to refute that equation (as we see with Billy Bragg - wants divorced from interests is what leads to a British solder being shot at by a fascist equipped with a rifle made in Birmingham).

Torchbearer, and I think also HeroWars/Quest, have systems that begin the process of disentangling these things. In Torchbearer, for instance, everyone wants cash, but the economic development rules make it the case that not everyone's interests are served by allowing cash to flow freely in a settlement - it can result in inflation and crashes.

Now Torchbearer's rules encode a particular outlook on the relationship between wants and interests, and I think it's more cynical than standard social realism. But it does show how some key distinctions that are important to social realism might begin to be operationalised in a RPG.

 

[pemerton]

It's just occurred to me that Classic Traveller should be another fertile opportunity for social realist RPGing.

Here's something I posted some years ago now:

Recently I've been re-reading my Classic Traveller books, and yesterday I GMed a session. It's the first time I've played Traveller for at least a couple of decades.

<snip>

Given that this is a 40 year old system, I think it holds up really well. (Although the original generation rules give very low-skill PCs - whereas I thought the addition of the special duty roll made our PCs, even the ones with only a term or three, interestingly well-rounded.) We did't have any combat yesterday - and Traveller combat is ridiculously brutal, hence the need for two PCs - but the rules for social encounters, dealing with officials, and the like all worked smoothly. The only source of complaint was from Vincenzo's player - "I didn't want to play an accounting game!" An abstract resource management system would probably make the experience of running a starship a bit smoother.

The other thing that I was struck by is how bleak the default setting of Traveller is. The chance of dying during low passage transit is 1 in 6 for an ordinary person (1 in 12 with proper medical personnel overseeing the process). That's really high, and yet the rules are full of starship with low berths and passenger tables that show plenty of people willing to pay to travel in them. So the impression one gets is of worlds full of poor people willing to face a really high risk of death in order to travel to worlds that offer better propsects (but only 1 jump at a time!), while nobles lord it over the populace in their ridiculously expensive yet largely pointless intersteller yachts.

And this bleakness came out even in the worlds I generated - who would want to live in the universe of Ardour-3, Byron and Enlil?

The social context implicit in Traveller is ripe for a social realist approach. And the spirit of Traveller - with simple yet far-reaching systems for handling world generation, law enforcement, trade and commerce, etc - seems highly conducive.

It's the only system I know of which permits, from its game rules (namely, for starship mortgages and Travellers' Aid Society memberships), the derivation of the prevailing interest rate (in the neighbourhood of 5%).

What would hold Traveller back, I think, is that it has no system for economic influence or economic development. This goes back to my observation, in the self-quote, that it relies D&D-style on actually keeping accounts of credits, rather than a more abstract wealth system such as is found in Burning Wheel and Torchbearer.

Nevertheless, I will try and think more about this.