Where's your RP at?

mietze

Probably the take away is that if you find a place you love to RP at, probably it's better to keep that to yourself or specific invites, lest you run into Hipster Gamer who is happy to tell you, "Oh. Yeah, maybe that's okay for some people, but you know, I kinda prefer something really good."

Arkandel

@mietze said in Where's your RP at?:

Except for no one has said those games shouldn't be allowed--but there has been lots of ZOMG IF U DON'T LIKE DEATH AT ANY MOMENT THEN U HATE RISK!

Yeah, I wanted to say.

My initial objection in this thread was "I wouldn't want to play a high-turnover game where your PC's death was basically guaranteed", and it somehow got turned around to "oh, so you never want your character to die or even face any setbacks?"

Miss Demeanor

@Arkandel My initial comment was 'need a game that involves actual risk of character death/dismemberment/getting your shit jacked/etc.'... and it got responded to as if nothing but PC death had been mentioned. So I have stopped giving fucks about being told that I am cherry-picking.

Ghost

I have mentioned death, danger, running into the law, etc as well. Like the both of you, I'm speaking about far more than just character death in terms of risk.

Misadventure

The snide answer is people hear what they want to hear.

A more accurate answer is they talk about what they want to talk about.

Still have no replies on what if anything someone would do to impart the risk feel.

Ghost

@Misadventure A question I have not answered because I think my input is moot. I gave an example in relation to AllFleshMustBeEaten further back, and would rather hear from other people since I have no issues with risk.

Am very interested in hearing others chime in on it.

Misadventure

An alternate example that has been brushed upon before is the idea of professional criminals, and the risks they take of exposure and capture.

How would that be handled, along with the attendant culture paranoia vs stupidity and greed and of snitching vs loyalty when the authorities are involved. Do you just say the masterful careful criminal is considered valuable, and the loud destructive idiot is not, even though neither is ever going to be caught?

Arkandel

@Misadventure said in Where's your RP at?:

An alternate example that has been brushed upon before is the idea of professional criminals, and the risks they take of exposure and capture.

How would that be handled, along with the attendant culture paranoia vs stupidity and greed and of snitching vs loyalty when the authorities are involved. Do you just say the masterful careful criminal is considered valuable, and the loud destructive idiot is not, even though neither is ever going to be caught?

The only viable approach is to allow them to be caught, but also to make it part of theme - in whatever way - that they won't be incarcerated.This isn't a new trope; in fact it's cliche in comics. The villain robs a bank, gets punched in the face by Spider-Man and is sent to jail from where he escapes, only to try it again.

There can be a multitude of ways to allow this to happen in-game - make the authorities easy to bribe, for instance, so that your IC freedom is assured but it gets taken out of your bottom of line, which means you have to make sure to have something saved up (as opposed to spending the cash on those wonderful toys) or be forced to borrow from the Thieves' Guild which leads to owning favors.

Other methods and themes can impact the character accordingly without taking them out of play, as long as the game is designed around it. Loss of face and owed boons for Vampire, for instance (the Elder made sure you're not staked for a year, but now you owe her), etc.

The important thing though is that the game is designed so there is a cost. Without that there is no risk either. "Sure, I'll owe the Elder!" means nothing if you're OOC fully aware you'll never be impacted by it.

Thenomain

I've always found that it's far too easy to kill without consequence.

In a tabletop that's not a problem, as the game is tailored to the table. In a larger game, it introduces the first edges of PvP that are hard to keep from slippery-sloping to its logical conclusion.

Ghost

I say that the concept of playing a criminal is entirely off-mark without the law to keep them in check. Good cannot exist without evil in concept, and thus, crime/criminals cannot exist without law/lawpersons (I collect my PC points)

I, if I were GMing, would not shy from checking a criminal player with anything ranging from IT information security, to patrol cops, to ATF task force investigations. There is no such thing as a criminal who does not need to be careful, and there is no such thing as a criminal with no need to cover their tracks.

As a GM, I would require rolls when conducting criminal business. Diplomacy for schmoozing the drug/gun buyers, law to know what the laws are, larceny rolls to determine success/failure. Their collective failures, successes, and gray-area decisions would be kept an eye on. A string of successes means the fine life. A string of fuckups might mean safe houses and fake passports.

If the player chose to continue to roleplay the character as brazen and careless despite warnings of an incoming ATF task force, then he/she may very well drive right into a choke point and plenty of kevlar-covered officers yelling at the character to get their hands up.

At that point, the player would have a decision to make:

Give up, but this could render the character in jail/out of reach, but I would still allow for an attempt or so to get free (jailbreak, Rodney Lawyerstein)
Drive. Drive. Drive. Run. Hide.
Go Tony Montana and brave a highly risky shootout that could result in death.

However the pelican chooses to fly is up to the player, but as a fair GM, I would never let a criminal character just assume a stance of "so good that it's all about the funtime to of being a criminal without any pesky law enforcement trying to squick my fun"

Three-Eyed Crow

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

@Misadventure A question I have not answered because I think my input is moot. I gave an example in relation to AllFleshMustBeEaten further back, and would rather hear from other people since I have no issues with risk.

I find zombie and zombie apocalypse boring as fuck, generally.

Which just means I'm not the target audience, and there are LOTS of games I'm not the target audience for which are very viable (I feel like my instincts for what I want to play are often counter to what would make a big game). That said, since this was the question, I'll provide an answer.

I gave up on The Walking Dead because it just got boring to me after awhile. I find it to lack a larger 'story,' other than the character's surviving another day and postponing the inevitable. For two or three seasons I was cool with this, but as it went on I just wandered away because hopelessness, at a certain point, isn't an arc. It's just hopelessness. I find the characters shallow and am not interested in their relationships, precisely because they're designed to be somewhat disposable. Ultimately, for all its sins, Game of Thrones' ability to make me invest in new characters like the Viper while still maintaining an ability to pull the rug out from under the audience is what makes me respect the hell out of its writers and keeps me coming back. But this is a high-wire trick that even most professional writers and showrunners can't pull off, let alone most MU* GMs.

Even The Greatest Generation suffered from lack of characters I cared about at various points, and I had far less fun in those campaigns. It worked best for me when people REALLY gave a shit about whether or not their character lived or died. Which, I'm fine with building something up just to have it torn down. That's tragedy, but tragedy can be great drama, and I enjoyed playing it. But some people didn't and idled out when their favorite characters died, and I can't say they were wrong. Not only was their investment gone, I can think of several cases where the campaign was lesser without that character. Not that player. That character. In persistent environments, relationships are what makes this stuff meaningful, and when that's gone it's not easily replaced.

All this is to say, I have no problem with character death. I have zero interest in making a disposable character for a 'hard core' GM who's going to run a Walking Dead-style MU*. I doubt I'm the majority. The Walking Dead is very popular, and post-apoc with a high bodycount in general is enjoying a pop culture moment right now. I won't even argue that you don't need character death in a setting like that. I think you do, because occasional meaningless death is a part of the point. But it ain't my bag and there's why.

SG

@Three-Eyed-Crow stop editing while I'm reading, I feel like I'm being shunted to the nextdoor timeline.

Three-Eyed Crow

@SG said in Where's your RP at?:

@Three-Eyed-Crow stop editing while I'm reading, I feel like I'm being shunted to the nextdoor timeline.

Lol just cleaning up my typos. They are always legion.

Ganymede

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Where's your RP at?:

Even The Greatest Generation suffered from lack of characters I cared about at various points, and I had far less fun in those campaigns. It worked best for me when people REALLY gave a shit about whether or not their character lived or died. Which, I'm fine with building something up just to have it torn down. That's tragedy, but tragedy can be great drama, and I enjoyed playing it. But some people didn't and idled out when their favorite characters died, and I can't say they were wrong. Not only was their investment gone, I can think of several cases where the campaign was lesser without that character. Not that player. That character. In persistent environments, relationships are what makes this stuff meaningful, and when that's gone it's not easily replaced.

I want to hook onto this because this is something that I thought long and hard about when pulling my game system together.

See, TGG was fun because it was fast-paced, and there was a high chance of death. It made success feel more successful. I get that. But what if death was optional? What if the point was to win or lose a battle, with consequences based on the win or loss, rather than death? What if the risk were more "global"?

On RfK, if you lost a political gamble, you didn't necessarily die. You probably owed some favors and were constantly worried about getting killed. But you were still in the game, and could claw your way back up. So, you lost the battle, but you don't lose your investment (entirely).

Envision a Battletech game, where the worst that happened was that you get taken out of a battle because your 'Mech shuts down. If you're trying to prevent the Clans from taking the capital of your planet, well, son, you just lost, so the chances are greater that the Clans will win. And if the Clan wins, well -- game over. Or maybe you move to a different planet. But the game's history changes, and you were a part of it -- on the losing side.

Maybe next time you win.

That's the sort of game I want to build.

SG

I have zero interest in making a disposable character for a 'hard core' GM

I was thinking about a system for using rostered yet still disposable NPCs for high mortality cutscenes and dangerous events so that my doomed colony campaign would at least have a core of skills available for certain crisis. This way, players can rp with danger while keeping their hipster bartenders in space safe to make mix tapes and mixed drinks.

Three-Eyed Crow

@Ganymede said in Where's your RP at?:

See, TGG was fun because it was fast-paced, and there was a high chance of death. It made success feel more successful. I get that. But what if death was optional? What if the point was to win or lose a battle, with consequences based on the win or loss, rather than death? What if the risk were more "global"?

On RfK, if you lost a political gamble, you didn't necessarily die. You probably owed some favors and were constantly worried about getting killed. But you were still in the game, and could claw your way back up. So, you lost the battle, but you don't lose your investment (entirely).

I think this is 100% the right track.

Because TGG was designed to more or less follow actual history (we could not kill Hitler), @EUBanana kept the stakes small-scale. Your squad was just one little part of the evac from Dunkirk, or Winter War in Finland, or any number of battles in WW1, but your individual actions mattered a hell of a lot. You could save your buddy! Or you could stumble into an enemy and get your buddy killed! You could win and lose grid-space 'territory' in what was meant to misrepresent a little section of the larger war effort.

I think you're right that it wasn't the risk that made it bracing, it was the meaningful stakes which that risk represented. I guess this circles back to investment (if you don't care about your buddy, you will not be invested in a scene in which he lives or dies). I definitely think there are other ways to create that than just a high body count (I find the idea pretty damn interesting).

Gingerlily

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in Where's your RP at?:

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

@Misadventure A question I have not answered because I think my input is moot. I gave an example in relation to AllFleshMustBeEaten further back, and would rather hear from other people since I have no issues with risk.

I find zombie and zombie apocalypse boring as fuck, generally.

I know zombies are super trendy these days, but I too dislike them. Not out of boredom but because the idea of zombies is one of the few things that gives me the total willies. Never watched Walking Dead. Ready for a new trend to take off...like sentient robots a la Westworld.

surreality

@SG said in Where's your RP at?:

I have zero interest in making a disposable character for a 'hard core' GM

I was thinking about a system for using rostered yet still disposable NPCs for high mortality cutscenes and dangerous events so that my doomed colony campaign would at least have a core of skills available for certain crisis. This way, players can rp with danger while keeping their hipster bartenders in space safe to make mix tapes and mixed drinks.

I'm actually going to be doing this almost exactly. There's a lot of great potential uses for 'extras' like this -- from canon fodder in battles to angry mobs to fill-in partygoers. Also a big boon for people to be able to play in things their main character(s) wouldn't necessarily get involved in, but looks like it could be fun once in a while for the player. It's an 'everybody wins' in big ways.

Ghost

I think the rules lethality needs to meet the lethality of elements in play. Using the Battletech, as referenced above, that game was mechanized war machines weighing hundreds of tons firing missiles, PPCs, and other deadly elements at each other. While, yes, one of the drawbacks of failure includes territory being lost, there's also the fact that many damage-related deaths in that setting were due to having enough missiles pummeling your mech that internal magazines exploded, or worse...A reactor explosion that detonated a miniature nuclear explosion that vaporized both your character and the mech.

IMO, if your game uses lethal action, then you cannot rule out character death as a result.

While it's not entirely lethal, a good IP for a MU might be "Into the Badlands", which is a mix of post apocalyptic setting and wandering Kung Fu badasses. Plenty of non-lethal is utilized in that setting, and your character getting their ass kicked in isn't so lethal.

Alamias

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

While it's not entirely lethal, a good IP for a MU might be "Into the Badlands", which is a mix of post apocalyptic setting and wandering Kung Fu badasses. Plenty of non-lethal is utilized in that setting, and your character getting their ass kicked in isn't so lethal.

I'd have to go back and re-watch it, but from what I remember Into the Badlands was very, very lethal? I seem to recall much blood and death.

But, I could be wrong. I haven't watched it in a while, and my memory may be hazy.