Narrative for non-wounding hits

In the last couple of months I've listened to a number of D&D 5e actual play podcasts courtesy of the Podcast of Foes series. Of the many things I've noticed is the way in which combat hits are narrated. Most GMs and players describe hits in the same way.

The weapon creates a wound.

I mean that even if it's a dagger used against a paladin in plate, the narrative is still about the dagger drawing blood or sinking into flesh. Hit points seem to be a bit more nebulous than that. They're a pool of points used to describe fatigue, bruising, cuts, poisoning, burns, infection, psychic pain, and so on. As such, we need to tailor our narrative to each strike. Let's consider a paladin with full hit points taking a few different hits.

From a lizardman's spiked shield: "The shield crashes into you, each spike delivering a painful bruise."

From a rogue's poisoned dagger: "The dagger thuds against your armour, and slides across to find the space between the plates, nicking your skin."

From an orc's sword: "The orc's sword comes down in an overhead arc. You lift your heavy shield high to block it and stagger back from the effort required to hold back the brute."

From a monk's flurry of blows: "The monk moves faster than your armour allows. Strikes land and miss, but all of them force you back and forth under the weight of your armour. It's exhausting."

The challenge is to find a fit between all the aspects that hit points represent and the details of the attack. The other challenge is to break the mental model that all attacks create wounds. As players we need to change the way we think about hit points.

I'll take a leaf from Vincent Baker's theorising about games. He described it as an interaction between Dice and Clouds. It's probably more accessible than using semiotics theory to describe it, so let's go with it.

The dice (the physical game component) have produced a number. The number is interpreted by the rules as a hit. The hit needs to be translated by the players into the cloud of the narrative. We know the first two parts of this chain quite well and have the opportunity to do better with the third part. Broadening our understanding of what hit points represents opens the possibilities for how to convert the interpreted die result into fiction.

So think broadly! What else does a successful hit look like in your game?

Swancon Wrap-up

The title is something of a misnomer since I was there only for the Saturday. At least 75% of the rest of Swancon happened without me there and has its own bards to tell those tales. However, what I did manage to witness transpired thusly.

I delivered a seminar (An Introduction to Story Games) early Saturday morning. The audience, though small, were engaged with the topic and listened intently. If you weren't there you missed out on the following:

• Story games occupy the intersection between the mode of production of fiction, the mode of performance of fiction, and the mode of consumption of fiction. To put it another way it's writing, improv and audience all in one activity.
• Good story games are structured to drive the players' consciousness back into the fiction with temporary detours into rules.
• My mind is currently chewing over the notion that good game design gives the tools for creating problems in the fiction so that the players can respond (solve?) those problems

All of that was decorated with examples from the forge, Vincent Baker's model of clouds and boxes, Robin Laws' analysis in Hamlet's Hit Points, as well as a host of other games and luminaries.

After this was said and done I set up a demo game of Fiasco in the gaming room and ran it several times before taking a break for lunch and a quick tour of the rest of Swancon, followed by a non-demo game of Fiasco. There were the requisite number of fedoras to qualify as a writer's convention, sufficient numbers of cosplayers to make for a presence, and at least one kilt. The dealers' room was mostly about fiction, including a significant collection of works by Gail Simone.

Speaking of Gail, I had hoped beyond hope that Fortuna would allow us to cross paths in between our scheduled activities but alas Fortuna did not smile on me that day. My copy of Wonder Woman #36 shall remain unsigned for now.

Kudos must go to Terry Chilvers for his organisation in the gaming room. He was organised before and during the event. I knew what was expected of me and had all the resources I needed to make it happen. It seems clear that I owe this man a game of Fiasco sometime.

And there's no con without networking. My aging business cards came in handy and may serve as the gateway to the next thing I contribute to in the Perth gaming scene. Watch this space for more.

the puppies, they are dead

it feels like a rite of passage, the gamer's hajj. "you must play kill puppies for satan at least once in your life." it was a bit of a joke, just to see if i'd run it, and i did.

it's a funny little game, with some clever ideas shamelessly stolen from other games (it says so in the text). as we played we made comparisons to other games and genres. we definitely took the game in the direction of drug addled reprobates and fiasco style incompetence. a kpfs fiasco playset might be hilarious.

as the gm, i had the usual struggles to get the characters moving along. providing npcs who hate them isn't bad, but that's never the same as when the players have their own goals. poison'd has ambitions that fill this role nicely. kpfs seems like the ancestor to poison'd in a few ways. the characters are horrible and deal with devils, spirits and gods, they sin and sin and this keeps satan happy, and so on. the addition of ambitions is a good move from parody game to playable game or multi-session game.

but really, there's just one goal here: kill puppies for satan. he rewards by making them powerful. when the action slows down, the characters need to kill cute animals. deliberately. with absolute antipathy. and in doing so, they make enemies. more enemies just forces the characters to become more powerful, so they need to kill more puppies. if the players just treat puppy killing as a fun thing to do on a lazy afternoon, the game has more than enough momentum.

the listlessness of the game is its chaotic core. there's no larger goal here, just the immediacy of killing puppies and the promise of power for doing that. this is a contender for best nietzschean game ever. play it at least once.

What I said on ZedGames

As it turns out, 4ZzZ was having troubles with their podcast and live streaming but didn't discover this until the show was almost over. This is some of what I said.

Print-on-demand makes it easier to publish in smaller volumes, even though the production cost is higher per unit. This facilitates more innovation and more product choice.

Printed self-publishing isn't new, but POD allows people to print small volumes in sizes other than Letter and A4. Games discussed here included Don't Rest Your Head and Braunstein.

Publishing through PDF is a zero-cost production method, once development costs are recovered. I wish I'd mentioned the Free RPG Blog here.

Pricing for PDFs is wide and varied, from the expensive to the free. Games discussed: Houses of the Blooded, Dresden Files.

Bundles of book-plus-PDF are a great marketing exercise. Games discussed: A Penny For My Thoughts, and a plug for the Bits & Mortar Alliance.

PDF technology offers more than just a non-printed document. Linked text throughout the document is just one example. Games discussed: Happy Birthday Robot

Digital publishing is not limited to PDF. D&D Insider is an example of a specific application for the digital distribution of game rules and character creation. WOTC's move away from PDF to DDI is a way to guide people to WOTC content, without actually blocking third-party materials from being used in D&D. Games discussed: D&D.

The future of digital publishing is anyone's guess, but the untapped area is probably the realm of the app, especially the app that integrates rules, character generation, note taking and dice rolling. I couldn't remember the name of the iPad app at the time, but it's Dicebook.

Despite the availability of digital publishing, digital dice-rollers and apps for your smart-device-of-choice (including my confession as an Apple Hipster), the gameplay experience at the table isn't significantly altered. Minor changes are seen in the books we carry to the table, and perhaps the realisation that some players might be on twitter rather than checking a rule or engaging with the game. It's vital that in any RPG, the point is to engage in the social activity of story-making with the others at the table. Games discussed: None, but a big shoutout to Vincent Baker and his model of dice & clouds.

There you have it. We covered a lot, and thankfully it was more than print-vs-PDF.

Theory from the Closet

If you're not listening to this podcast regularly, you're missing out on some great gaming discussion. Clyde records it and refuses to edit it, so you get the conversation in all its glory. He's had some very interesting people on lately, with good things to say - even if you disagree with them, the mere fact of the disagreement is validity enough to give them worth.

So go there now and start listening - especially to the interview with Vincent Baker.

How Poison'd was Poison'd

At Gen Con this year I decided to bring Vincent Baker's game of Poison'd along. The con was due to fall on Talk Like A Pirate Day and I had no pirate games. Poison'd was preceded by a great recommendation from the podast community, so it was an easy choice.

During the con, it was run twice at the indie tables. Once was by me, and once by Jason. It wasn't quite the rollicking success I'd hoped. What I want to do here is explain what went wrong and how I plan to fix it next time.

Mistake 1: I ignored the primary rule of Vincent's games. From the little I know of his games and from reading his blog, Vincent wants people to remember that the fiction is first and last, with forays into the rules only where required. The fiction determines which rule to invoke. This relies heavily on the GM knowing all the rules and all the various elements of the fiction that are tied to the rules. I, unfortunately, made a significant and improper call in regard to combat when one side is clearly outgunning the other (e.g., "I whip out the gun and shoot him in the head!" to an unarmed person). By trying to force this through the combat and escalation rules, it left a sour taste in people's mouths. I should have used the rule for attacking a helpless opponent and had that been successful, immediately moved to the rules for mortal wounds.

Mistake 2: I let an inexperienced person run the game. My first group was told up front that I wanted to run the game, that it was my first time with the rules and that I would only proceed if they were willing to be my experimental group. 18 hours later, one of these players wanted to run the game and inherited all the same mistakes I made the first time. I should have said no.

Mistake 3: I didn't promote the use of Xs well enough. This is a game that requires characters to lose before they can win. More accurately, it requires that characters lose big before they can win big. Consequently, players were hesitant to drive the fiction in the directions required to stock up on the Xs. Ultimately, the character with the highest Brutality was triumphant. I should have pressed this point at the beginning of the game, and several times throughout the game.

Mistake 4: I didn't promote the ambitions well enough. The ambitions, especially of the sample characters from the game text, are set up to provoke conflict. A lot of conflict. And by achieving these ambitions, characters get to raise their Ambition stat. Consequently, the players didn't drive the fiction in those directions until too late in the session. I should have made these ambitions the core of the game, rather than relying on bangs to keep it all moving.

There are probably several other mistakes that I made, but these are the biggest and most embarrassing of the lot. I've not done any justice to Vincent's game and I apologise to him and the fans of Poison'd for this. I really want to play this game again, but I'm afraid that I may have a tough time trying to find players now because of my mistakes.

Damn, bugger and blast. I'm really sorry, Vincent.

Vincent Baker on Clouds and Character Sheets

Vincent Baker has written a brief post on the level at which RPG play operates, and the level at which he thinks it ought to operate. If you're interested in making your game experience more about the fiction than the rules then you should at least read what he's written because in one way or another it will contribute to your RPG experience.

I take his point to mean that roleplaying should be about the story, and that events in the story should trigger game mechanisms or character sheet information rather than the other way around. Game rules should also immediately redirect the players back to the fiction in order to make events happen.

I think he has a valid point, but perhaps an incomplete one. There could be some interesting progress made on helping to identify characteristics of game rules which support this style of play so that game designers can create those kinds of rules.

Over to you, dear internet.