[RPG Theory] Building Towards Success

[stevekenson]

A recent thread on RPG.net got me thinking about success and failure and the progress of plot in an RPG again: in standard dramatic story structure, we have “rising action,” the hero(es) facing and overcoming various obstacles, until we reach a climax, a decisive moment: Luke hits the thermal exhaust port on the Death Star, Frodo and Sam make it to the cavern on Mt. Doom, etc., which decides the whole thing. The rest is falling action and epilogue.

So we can view this like stories themselves having “hit points” or “victory conditions.” It’s not just a matter of RPG characters making their way through a series of unconnected “encounters” where the outcome is largely random. It’s more a matter of accumulating sufficient “plot momentum” (or victory points, or whatever you want to call ‘em) to reach that peak moment before the other side can do so: can the Rebels blow up the Death Star before it’s able to fire on their base and wipe out the Rebellion? All the interplay leading up to that moment is just like the back-and-forth of a small scale combat.

Looked at from this approach, failure in any particular die-roll or task isn’t necessarily a plot-ender, just a delay in the process of getting to the climax of the story (just like a missed attack in combat doesn’t necessarily end the fight). Now, if the other side does exceptionally well, it could be a fatal delay, but it doesn’t have to be. If Luke & Co. had really screwed up from Tattooine on, then the Empire might have won, but it wasn’t like Luke was going to miss that shot at the Death Star: by the time he got to that point, it was a sure-thing. The last-minute arrival of the Millennium Falcon pushed the Rebel “victory counter” over the top and that was that. (You even get that from Han Solo’s “Now let’s blow this thing and go home” comment, like it’s a done deal.)

Now to actually figure out the mechanics for it... hmmm

Comments

[nightofdragons.livejournal.com]

Interesting idea. I like the concept of the heroes in a 'race' against their opponents to complete their goals. Maybe you could do it with an outline format. Create a basic outline for the story, coming up with ideas for the major factors at play, then track which ones the heroes succeed and fail at. Describe the story depending on what happens.

I dunno, real rough idea and I see several problems with it, but maybe it could be polished. Any thoughts?

[tabrumj.livejournal.com]

I think I very much like this idea. The concept of developing a Narrative Weight that assures the characters victory towards the end of a story, but only does so through their own actions, has a great deal of appeal. I can also see the benefit of such a mechanic in supporting several genre tropes. In many movies and novels, there are multiple encounters with the Villain. In most of these cases the early fights are inconclusive. It would be nice to have a mechanic where during the first couple of fight the players are saying "Well of course we didn't defeat him yet. We don't have enough victory points accumulated."

Of course I have no idea how to do such a thing.

[tabrumj.livejournal.com]

And just like that I had an idea. What about linking the benefits of spending a resource like Conviction to the accumulation of Victory Points. As the PC's accumulate victory points over the course of a story, it grants them increasing benefits fro spending conviction. So by the point that the character are getting ready to do the equivalent of destroying the Death Star, they could spend a point of conviction to force a natural 20 instead of just getting a re roll.

[xomec.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was thinking of something kind of along the lines of Perseverance from the old Orrorsh sourcebook for Torg: where the characters have to build up their determination to overcome their fear of the monster in order to regain their full effectiveness. Something like that, with an escalating scale of the effectiveness of Conviction points, might work, although you still have to have a Conviction point to spend at that key moment, which is a potential sticking point, if you don't know when the key moment is or how soon you'll get there.

[wordwill.livejournal.com]

I love it. I've been tinkering with something similar for a Storytelling variant in which scenes have this kind of victory-total, but I hadn't exploded the idea to the level of whole stories. To a certain extent, this reminds me of Agon, as being well suited to a competitve (or friendly competitive) play experience, wherein the GM is trying to achieve his goal while the players are achieving theirs.

More than that, if each of the characters has an individual arc, with its own rising action, then a strategic element emerges wherein each player has to decide if it's worth leaving his current arc incomplete for the sake of completing the party's overall story (the A Plot, let's say) before it's too late.

This fits terrifically into one of my pet RPG projects, which shall likely never see the light of day.