How and Why to Make PCs Suffer

This weekend I'll be playtesting a couple games I've been working on. If all goes well, there should be some interesting post material gained from that. And if all doesn't go well.

In the meantime, here's a table that's common to both of the games I'll be playtesting, as well as pretty much any game I run in the future.

It's six ways that you can make people suffer. This is good. You want to make your PCs suffer for their commitments—to people, to institutions, to ideas, to their own flaws, to ambitions—and see if they change.

WILLIAM BLAKE, illustration of the book of Job

(Man, Job is ripped in that pic. Must have had the juice hookup in the land of Uz.)

SIX WAYS TO MAKE THEM SUFFER (actually or potentially)

1. harm (physical, emotional)
2. isolation (social, physical)
3. dissonance (they see something that contradicts what they believe)
4. betrayal 
5. loss (of goods, relationships, status)
6. humiliation

Example: Bard Wants to Train Under the Master

Our bard wants to take it to the next level. Everyone knows the only way to do that is to learn from the hand of Master Hovenbeet. But every time our bard seems to make progress in his lessons, he suffers for it:

1. rival students threaten to beat him up (threatened harm)
2. rival students actually beat him up (actual harm)
3. the master insults him before the whole class for making a single mistake, says he'll never be able to make it (humiliation)
4. one morning he finds himself unable to play the simplest tune (dissonance)
5. one evening he hears the master himself playing, but as many notes are off as on (dissonance)
6. rival punches him in throat; he can't sing for the recital (harm, loss)
7. master breaks the bard's mandolin (humiliation, loss)
8. none of the other students sit with him at mess (isolation), even his friend (betrayal)

Will he keep it up, or will he break, or will he decide that he was wrong to want this in the first place? 

How will he react? Why?

That's what we want to find out. 

That's where the story is. 

How to Grind 5E's Inspiration and Tell a Story While You're at It

Here is the (paraphrased) RP info from the starter set's dwarven cleric's background: 

Alignment: Neutral Good

Background: Soldier

Traits: polite, defers to others

Ideal: respect

Bond: three cousins

Flaw: doubt if the gods care about mortal affairs

The starter set elaborates on the background, saying that you disobeyed an immoral order and got suspended, and now you're out on the road wanting to dish out some violence to folks that ain't got no respect. 

I rolled some dice and ended up with Thoradin Dankil, middle aged male dwarf of average height/weight. 

After the first encounter (after 3 in-game hours, when I recovered from dropping to zero), I figured I needed to get some inspiration. I checked out my RP info above, and the flaw looked like easy pickings. 

It was. I said he went off to the woods to pray, but couldn't get the words out. Just assumed a bitter look and went back to the party. 

That's not bad. But, once that inspiration was gone and I was jonesing for another hit, I thought: how can I leverage that flaw again? Just doing the same thing would be lame; it needs to go somewhere. 

I could talk about it with another character, but, once you've done that, that's about as far as you can go, isn't it? For instance, I could ask if another player wanted to do a little scene: "How about you ask me to pray for you or a relative or something?" That would give me an opportunity to reveal my flaw. Or I could ask the GM for a scene where I see a leper or something who sees my holy symbol and asks if I can heal him. Both of those would work. Once. 

Hopefully the PHB or DMG will have some advice/techniques along these lines; but, until then, I present unto ye: 

HOW TO MAKE YOUR STUFF DYNAMIC

In the first instance, show how you are dissatisfied, discontent, or unhappy with some state of affairs. 

Example: Thoradin tries to pray but can't. 

In the second instance, show the reason for that dissatisfaction. 

Example: "A stooped and slender woman approaches Thoradin with her infant son; the kid's barely breathing and is thin and wrinkled like a raisin. She asks me to pray for him. I say, if the gods really cared about what happened to him, they wouldn't have let him be born this way in the first place. She says just pray for him. I do."

In the third instance, you are going to assign yourself a goal. 

To do this, you first have to know what you want. What do you want to change? And what significant opposition or situation is stopping you from changing it? 

Then, once you know that, what single, concrete achievement do you think will make that possible? Write that down. 

Then show your work. 

Example: I think: how do I want this to go? What does Thoradin want to change about this situation? Does he want to believe that the gods actually do care? Or does he want to give up all pretense of devotion to the gods to attain some sort of personal authenticity? 

Let's say that I want to believe my god is not only powerful but good. Like Mulder, I want to believe. 

But I don't know right now how it will turn out; I'm only putting a pin in my destination; I'm not mapping the roads I'll take to get there, not yet anyway; and it's not a sure thing that I'll get there at all or that I'll even be satisfied when I get there. 

This isn't plotting a story; it's not railroading or story-before. It's deciding what my story is going to be about—and how I'm going to benefit the party by gaining inspiration like crazy. 

So now I know what I want to change: I want to believe that the (good) gods are actually good and do care about human affairs. The signficant opposition is: everything, all the suffering in the world, personal defeats, baddies making saving throws vs my spell DCs, etc. In other words, the opposition is internal; it's my judgments and emotions. It's a conflict essentially about changing my own beliefs. The world itself need not change for my character to overcome or surrender to this opposition. 

So what is the single, concrete achievement I think will make this change in my beliefs possible? You don't have to decide this on your own; if you don't know, the other players might have something cool in mind, or the GM might have something prepped that already fits. 

Example: I just start making stuff up. Thoradin grew up hearing stories of the Egil Sanguispire, a legendary warrior-ascetic who, because he longed to commune with the same deity that Thoradin worships, dug a pit just wide and tall enough to fully contain his body when kneeling, inscribed the walls with psalms, and filled it with the blood of the god's enemies. When it was full to the brim, he sat in it and breathed until the blood filled his lungs. After ten minutes, he emerged, vomited gallons of blood back into the pit, and the whole thing drained into the earth. He wasn't the same afterward, slew dragons, built empires, etc. They say for those ten minutes he entered the presence of the god and could speak with him as a friend speaks to a friend. That's what Thorin's going to do. He's going to get answers directly.   

Single, concrete achievement: build and drown in a pit of sanguispiration.

Now then, I've got to show my work. I'll have Thoradin start digging a pit somewhere and ask the players which one of them wants to come ask me what I'm doing. That will let the explanation enter the fiction. We'll do a montage or something.  

In the fourth instance, you've got to advance toward you goal in clearly identifiable steps, suffering setbacks, and really suffering. 

Example: digging the pit, killing the god's enemies, collecting and transporting and preserving their blood until I have enough to fill the pit.

In the fifth instance, you need pushback from the world. I'll recruit the GM and other players to pass judgment on what I'm doing and why, to change how I'm thinking. 

Example: one of the PCs brings my a drink while I'm in the pit, inscribing runic psalms into the walls. "You know you're just going to drown in there and die, right? It's just a story." How do I react? Another example: an NPC asks me "What are you hoping to learn? What could you gain from all this?" What do I say? Do I even know? 

In the sixth instance, I need to change my mind or hold steadfast. After suffering, questioning, exploring the issue through my relationships with the other characters in the game (as above), I need to make a decision: is Thoradin going to go through with his original plan, or has he been dissuaded. Then show your work. 

Example: I'm standing above the pit, having filled it to the brim with the big bad's blood, straight from his severed head. Looking very grim. Thoradin has made his decision. 

In the seventh instance, show the outcome of your decision. You reach a point of no return; your decision is tested, and you are vindicated or defeated. How you determine this can vary. There can be a whole subsystem implemented; you can ask the GM just to fiat what happens, you can roll for it, take a vote among the players. Whatever. 

Example: Thoradin walks away. He fastens the lid over the pit and walks away. However it is determined, it's determined that this will be a positive resolution for Thoradin. Maybe, as a result of everything he's experienced, he can believe in the goodness of the gods without possibly drowning to death in a pit of blood for no reason. Or maybe he ditches his holy symbol and retires or switches his cleric levels for fighter levels. 

Alternately, if he had gone through with the sanguispiration, and the resolution was negative, he could just have died, and the party finds him in the morning and holds a funeral, and it's sad. Or he has his vision, gets answers from his god, and they incense him. He emerges from the pit, sets his affairs in order, and kills himself. Or his god blows his mind, and everything is illuminated, even if he can't articulate it to his compadres, and he emerges with pep in his step and a smile on his face.

BUT WHAT IF YOU DIE FIRST?

Sorry, you have a bad ending. Getting a good ending should be hard: you have to survive long enough to get it. If Thoradin dies before his moment of truth, then we probably have our judgment: the gods really don't care. See, Thoradin? You're dead. 

WHAT ABOUT SUFFERING?

Part of the drama of the thing is striving after your character's goal, then suffering. The problem is that D&D doesn't model suffering very well right now. If you have hp, you're pretty much fine. If you don't, you're either about to be fine or dead. 

So you need (a) some things and people to care about that can be damaged or destroyed in the process to cause you mental/emotional suffering, and/or (b) you need to implement some sort of injury system to model physical suffering. Like every failed death save represents an injury or something. 

It could be as simple as: when you fail a death save and survive, you have an injury. GM says what it is, fictionally. Adjudicate any mechanical consequences on the spot. 

 

 

How to Make People Tell a Story Without Realizing It

In the ur-mode of play, PCs are pawns. You may add personality to them and such, but that's an enhancement layer.

In another style of play, the PCs are dramatic characters: their dramas are what the game is fundamentally about, and the rules of the dungeon delving and such exist to emulate genre and to have the outcome of PC-drama be genuinely in question and dependent at least in part on the skill of the player.

That's the kind of play I'm going to be talking about, and the best part is, you can sneak in this style of player in a purely GM-facing way, without introducing any new mechanics to your players. They don't have to write anything on their sheets if they don't want to.

And you can layer this over pretty much any RPG that doesn't already focus on this kind of stuff or that focuses on it poorly.

This way of doing things will guarantee you a dramatic narrative.

Period.

It may be cut short through bad luck or poor play (feature, not bug, otherwise we'd be doing collaborative writing or narrative-sharing exercises or zzzzzzzzz....), but, if things play out over enough time, you will have a story because the moves you are making will elicit responses from the players that constitute such a story.

You are the GM. Part of your job is to ask questions of the players. Part of their job is to answer them. This is half of how the game is played. So we just hook on the narrative bits to that real-world interaction.

You are looking to see the PCs show a certain number of things, some repeated, some unique. They are:

1. The PC's dissatisfaction, despair, or discontentment with the status quo. 
2. What the PC's wants
3. Why the PC wants it
4. What made the PC this way
5. What concrete plan of action the PC will take to get they want
6. The PC's escalating dissatisfaction, despair, sorrow, or discontentment in failing to achieve what they truly want (repeatable, ideally 3x)
7. The PC's escalating reaction to challenges to their way of thinking (repeatable, ideally 3x)
8. The PC's ultimate decision to change mind or remain steadfast 
9. The moment of truth, when things will go ultimately poorly or well for the character when viewed in retrospect
10. The aftermath, where we judge the PC and his actions and convictions by seeing the effects they have and the presentation of those effects 

Those are the things that need to be shown for each PC. If a PC's dissatisfaction is that he's lonely, we need to see him eating alone, watching the lovey dovey couples eating their Lady and the Tramp spaghetti, and leaving his food unfinished to go disassemble and reassemble his musket for the fourth time that day (or whatever). 

I'll get more into techniques for doing this in a later post, but, if you're familiar with scene framing techniques, etc., you can probably take it from here.  

Personal Story

I like the creation of story to be a goal of play, even in D&D. Not just things happening one after another, but actual this-all-means-something story.

It can be really complicated and lame, but it doesn't have to be.

And, in fact, it doesn't need to happen all the time; it just needs to be possibly happen, and its happening needs to be a goal.

What I'm about to propose makes all kinds of sense in my mind, but I haven't actually tried it out properly yet.

1. If we encode something that your toon wants, we have the possibility of narrative. 
2. If we want the issue, whatever it is, to be the focus or goal of play, then we need some way to arrive at a conclusion to it. 
3. Stories are crazy and can resolve any number of ways. 
4. This game already has a way of keeping score. It is called XP. 
5. I would like player skill to partially determine the outcome (comedic or tragic) of the PC's story.
6. We can run the game in such a way that acquiring XP reflects player skill (OSR play typically does this)
7. Therefore, we can use XP to determine the resolution of the story.
8. But how to measure? 
9. I will tell you.

In 4E, there is a thing called an extended rest. Hint: it's just "resting for a day," which has existed since forever as the means to restore your "daily/adventure resources" like spells and hp. 

That's a reset button; so the XP-acquisition cycle needs to be tied to that. 

The question of skill is: how much XP can you acquire per cycle? Skilled play should result on average in a high ratio of XP per rest. That's what we want to encourage anyway. (This "solves" the 15 minute adventuring day, btw.)

(Presumably you're going into a dungeon, an area that you will NOT be able to clear in one go. That's what these rules are designed to cover. If you're going into an area that CAN be cleared in one go, scale the following to that, with 100% clear meaning 100% chance of comedy. Keeping reading; it'll make sense.)

To make this work, you need to know a couple things:

1. What is the maximum feasible XP acquisition per daily cycle? 
2. Arithmetic.

Once you know those, you will need to do a few things:

1. Divide the max feasible XP per cycle by 100; this is called the "XP unit" or whatever is a better name
2. Decouple the daily resource reset from diurnal fictional processes (i.e., sleeping for a night does NOT mean you get your spells and hp back)
3. Optionally, come up with a fictional trigger for the daily resource reset, or
4. Don't worry about it, and just let it be meta

Now then, the party will be tracking how much XP they've gained anyway; if they're curious, they can cross reference with the XP unit value to see what % chance they've got at getting a comedic resolution to their PC's personal story. 

Now, the personal story may not be resolved by the time the PCs take an "extended rest" and trigger the daily resource refresh. That's fine. Just take the % they've gathered so far and have them note it.

When it comes time (that's another post) to resolve their personal story, you will average all the %s they've accrued during their daily resource cycles and try to roll under that. Max is 100% so that there is always at least a 1% chance of tragedy. 

This is all very high level and without example. I will try to fix that real quick. 

Brill Ficklam is a level 1 fighter. The GM has determined that 200 XP is the max feasible to be gained per extended rest (XR). So 2 XP is the XP unit; every 2 XP is +1% chance of comedic resolution. 

Brill wants to get married, say, because he thinks only romance can make him happy. (I don't know; I'm just coming up with stuff off the top of my head). But the problem is he's really socially awkward; so he wants to train with the party's rogue to get better at talking to girls so he can finally get a date. That seems like an okay story, fine. 

Over the course of two XRs, Brill has had a lot of romantic disappointment and gained 100 and 150 XP, which is 50% and 75% chance of comedy respectively. Say it's come to do or die in the narrative, and he's pulled out all the stops, and is he going to get this date with the girl he's been pining over for the past three months? Average those results, and you get 62.5 (round up because we like Brill). So 63% chance of comedic resolution. Roll it, and GM says what happens, etc. 

Nobody may know what to do with this yet! I'm writing it mostly for my own reference later.