The Adversarial DM

[Agemegos]

I did a lot of 1 on 1 James Bond sessions (with me as the player). It's the only game I've really enjoyed such a style of play.

I can understand how that would be. The James Bond subgenre gives a lot of support for that, and West End's James Bond 007 is the best match of rules to genre of any RPG I know of.

 

[Chacal]

I see no problem if the action points are part of a NPC description. In this case, choosing to use one is no different than choosing to use a specific action or spell. The problem can arise if these points are for a group of them, or an adventure. In this case I would advocate assigning them to NPCs. This should be sufficient IMO.


Chacal

 

[Umbran]

This lends itself to the notion that an NPC will do what it can, offensively or defensively or in other situations, to survive without the NPC always crunching numbers that it shouldn't have (at least not to the degree of the GM)...it's much more instinctive in this way, IMO.

Yes, but then you run into the fact that the players will, in general, be doing the number crunching. So your NPCs are effectively working with a bit of a disadvantage.

To me, this seems to come down to a matter of gamer psychology. In my own experience, a gamer who is going to take things adversarially after activating a critical will take things adversarially after any major setback. After all, the GM not only activates criticals. The GM places the challenges, and decides every single action of the NPCs - who gets attacked, what spells got cast, etc. There are so many other decisions that a DM can make that can be taken adversarially that adding one more to the pile really shouldn't be an issue.

This is not to say that games need to be designed symmetrically. It merely means that one should not use fear of adversarial gaming as a design criteria. There are good reasons to use symmetric or asymmetric design in various places, but trying to dodge the cry of, "You killed my character!" is not one of them.

 

[MerricB]

There's a big difference between attacking a character and then rolling the dice to determine the character's fate, and just using a mechanic to say "the character's dead", especially if it's a core part of the game.

Cheers!

 

[Umbran]

There's a big difference between attacking a character and then rolling the dice to determine the character's fate, and just using a mechanic to say "the character's dead"...

I disagree with you, in a couple of senses...

Sense 1: In the situation of confirming criticals, in general what is happening is not "just using a mechanic to say the character's dead". That choice to confirm doesn't exist in isolation. There's a combat - it has to evolve so that the PC in question ends up fighting the NPC. And a hit is rolled, and the critical confirmed, and then the damage dice have to come up with enough damage to kill. While there is one act of will in the mix, there are still also a number of random factors. If the NPC is going to fight, well darned tootin' he's going to confirm a critical on occasion. So, the choice to confirm the critical is no more adversarial than the choice to engage the players in combat at all.

A GM always has the ability to slay PCs at his disposal, so long as the game mechanic allows for death at all. If the GM wanted to be adversarial, he or she would not need this particular mechanic to do it.

Sense 2: Irrational responses to character death or injury are not based upon the game mechanic! The player knows the rules, and therefore knows that character death is a possibility. Therefore, absent other strong evidence of personal persecution, taking a confirmed critical as an adversarial act by the GM is not rational. A player who is not rational will not see much difference between confirming the critical and the choice to engage in the PC in combat with an NPC that might kill them. If the player wants to take it adversarially, they will find a justification, no matter the mechanic involved.

 

[Mark]

Yes, but then you run into the fact that the players will, in general, be doing the number crunching. So your NPCs are effectively working with a bit of a disadvantage.

Have you been running short of NPCs lately?