Persuading people for fun and profit - redux

I listened to an episode of the Happy Jacks RPG Podcast when they talked about how to convince another PC, while still keeping that free will. I liked the idea voiced there and decided to put it up here for keeping.

When you want to persuade another PC, make you roll for whatever ability or skill you use. If you succeed, now ask the player of that character what they might be convinced by, and what buttons pressed might give them the idea to change their minds. Now role play out the scene, with that newly gained knowledge from the meta level.

You might not convince them in the end, but you gained something from having a character that was more socially experienced or convincing than you are. Also, nobody was robbed of their free will be a roll of a die.

I might work out.

The idea of Interludes

I have been very much into the idea if running Savage Worlds for a week or so. It's a game that manages to look kind of plain when read, but everyone I've heard of who have run it have come away raving fans. We'll see if I can manage to actually try it out one of these days.

One of the things that easily makes you a Savage fan is the support Pinnacle give their games. Recently they released the Deluxe edition of SW, and guess what? They posted the major rules differences in a couple pdfs on their web pages, for free! At least it makes me want to go out and buy the new book, just because!

The thing I wanted to bring up today is the new rules for something called Interludes which is a quite neat thing I think could be imported into any game. Go check it out and see what you think. For you who like to stay around, here's when I tell you how it can be worked into any game. This is how I'd do it.

When you have any kind of pause in the action in your game, shuffle a deck of cards and have a player at random draw a card. The next time you do it, choose anyone one. Now, what the player who drew a card does, is she tells a short flashback or similar story which develops the back story and fleshes out the psychology or her character. It doesn't have to be long, but it has to show some new aspect of her personality, or an old one explained in a new light.

The suit of the card decide what the theme of the vignette is.

Hearts - some kind of love or romantic angle
Clubs - some kind of violence of physical conflict
Diamonds - some kind of relation to possessions and material riches
Spades - some kind of spiritual or religious angle

How about that? The rules from Pinnacle are slightly different, but I liked the idea enough to post my own take on it. I think this can be used just as well with pretentious new school games of the Story Game kind as well as neck beard grumpy old schooler games where you make it all up and roll some bones. Heck! Roll some dice when telling the story if it helps you decide what happened! I like the idea, any way you slice it.

Playing Lady Blackbird

Last Saturday, I ran Lady Blackbird with a couple of friends. It was fun and everyone laughed a lot. Still, it was not as I had hoped it would be.

For those of you who doesn't know, Lady Blackbird is both a scenario and a game system. John Harper designed it, and distributes in freely on the web (see the link above). It's a pdf with a setup, some sketchy setting information and five characters with a rules summary. This means that all the time when you play Lady Blackbird, the character will be the same, and it will start the same way and diverge from there.

So, what did I like? Well, the game system if easy enough and the character are all fun an easily triggers ideas for play. Also, all characters have relations to each other and other forces in the world. It's a good setup.

So, what did I not like? Well, the game system really demands you to invent stuff. You should go out of your way to really, really grab xp at every opportunity. You should also look for opportunities to reinvent the character and take the meagre stuff on your sheet and develop it, though play. You think this all sounds like positives? Yeah, kind of. But, it also mean you have to have proactive players. You have to be able to design and add to the setting as a player. This is not for everyone. Actually, I think the old saying that a good GM can make anything fly is wrong. Good players, can make anything fun! Mine weren't too bad, actually.

What am I complaining about then? Maybe I'm just teasing, to make a bland post more dramatic? Anyway.

It went well, like I said. But, it took quite long in the session until people actually remembered their keys, and that they gained xp for them! Also, I tried to follow the GM advice and ask questions and follow along, and not try to steer the action. Those times I tried to force the issue by pointed questions about how people felt about being treated "like that", they more often than not shrugged and let it pass. But, it shall be said that they did create more trouble for themselves after a while anyway. I just wished they had responded like I wanted them too! Yeah, I know. They did well.

Now I want to run this game again, to see if it will differ as wildly as it seem to have done, in podcasts and forum posts. Interesting game.

Horray for Dave-day!

This day marks the one day anniversary of the death of Dave Arneson. Let's make it "Horray for Dave"-Day by celebrating all feats of player ingenuity, remembering the player who won a session of Braunstein by distributing flyers from helicopter.

I have two player memories to share.

One
At one time I was harassing my players with an outsider. He could communicate telepathically and he was invisible. After being seriously creeped out by his very tempting insinuations and teasing they pulled back from the caves. Armed with what they had learned they decided to study spells, use potions and make a tactical plan for positioning and striking with maximum efficiency. This time when they entered the caves the outsider soon saw they meant to kick ass, and perched itself on top of a tall building and started to call down flaming rain and hellfire upon the characters. They now had protections against fire and at once ran their tactical plan like clockwork. One guy now equipped for flying raced towards the demon with a tool of dismissal from their plane. Everyone was exactly where they should be, and the dismissal worked at first try. The outsider was gone, just like that! They spend quite some time to make sure and they secured the caves. Player skill and planning.

Two
In another dungeon the party was encountering a tribe of hyenakin, gnolls. After having had these doggies ask them for toll every time they passed, one player decided to end it. He challenged the pack leader, the alpha male, to a duel. He won, and from now on had a tribe of his own to call upon. Quite cool. They ended up building him a tavern outside the dungeon, getting revenue for the party.

Am I a jerk? Are you?

I noted a short while ago that on some of the blogs I read, people were agitated because some guy somewhere had criticized the OSR gang for some kind of crime. Oddly enough nobody seemed to have bothered to link to the poor guy, probably because they didn't want to help him get any more hits in the visitor statistics.

Personally I think that is a bit rude. If you are bothering commenting upon something, I think it's just decent to acknowledge the existence of the guy standing in the same room as you, and whom you are talking about! Come on guys, you can do better than that.

So. I think I managed to find who it was everyone was up in arms against. One think this guy mentioned I found interesting, and I'm going to comment on that even if it wasn't what everyone found so infuriating.

Why do we speak of "educating" players, and "teaching" then proper play by playing rough? I know the idea of Player Skill, and I know all about brutal character killing adventures. I play T&T, remember? Take a look at those solos. Many of them are so deadly it's just silly. Quite a few are still fun. Most of the time. If you have read my blog some you also know I like that Player Skill part.

Now, imagine real physical people telling you about this cool kind of game where you play a scoundrel doing dirty deeds and some heroics for gold and glory in dank dungeons. Also, try to imagine those people acting like total jerks when you sit down to play and telling you they only stabbed your character in the back to "teach you" to become a better player.

I think we have a problem here.

While I think the idea is still valid, maybe the fact that some people tell you that "old school" just mean some jerks trying their best to rob you of fun means that we have a public relations problem.

While I don't think we need a OSR feel-good-ambassador or anything, I think that if a complaint comes up more than once, it might be a good idea to give the whiner the benefit of a doubt and see if there's something to be learnt. He might still be a whining moron, but you can learn something.

That's my two cents.