>From: "Raul F.R." <eikinskialdi_at_...>
>
>--- Roderick wrote:
>
> > And another one from me: What can you do to a defeated enemy (as in "I
> > tie him up...then slit his throat").
>
>In our game, my players do this constantly, and include interrogation
>and torture before this.
This problem occurs because of pro-forma setting of stakes in contests. That is, one assumes that, if the stated goal is to capture the opponent, that this occurs even on a marginal victory. And, once captured, then any successive contests will be ones that "no self-respecting hero would fail at" (Automatic Success on cutting throats).
The problem here is that what's happening is that, by allowing these goals to indicate these specific results, you're allowing the players to circumvent the stakes that the rules indicate. That is, what's the difference between capture and subsequent summary killing, and simply killing the opponent in the combat on a marginal victory?
Don't get me wrong, I actually advocate allowing death on a marginal victory in the right cases. The rules do say that if you get a victory, any victory, that you get your goal. But then it says that you can't kill somebody in combat without a complete victory. This seems directly contradictory. I reconcile this by noting that I think that the combat outcomes given are simply examples of potential outcomes, and ones that are specifically tailored to deal with player heroes, and other characters who are important villains, etc.
In short, characters with plot immunity.
Basically, the goal statement should get to more of what the players want to see than what the characters want to see. That is, sure, the villain is out to kill the player's hero. But as narrator, I'm not interested in seeing that on a marginal victory. Instead I'll make the goal about something else, some lower stake. Using the stock example, what we're using as the goal is injuring your opponent, essentially.
The point is that the system tends to reserve Complete Victories for the removal of the source of conflict, not marginal victories. On a marginal, you may have gotten some shorter-term goal, but you don't usually get to eliminate the fun opposition. Just some element of it. You injure your opponent. Or you destroy five of his mook guards. But this leaves the opponent intact to deal with yet again.
There is functionally no difference in terms of elimination of the dramatic opposition via death in combat, and capture. These are exactly the same circumstances. Put it this way, if you do allow capture on a marginal victory, then the opponent should be allowed to put up some resistance against the capturer with only a -1 penalty, as that's all that's been delivered. Does that make any sense?
No?
Then don't narrate a capture on a marginal defeat. A capture where the opponent is fully and permanently out of play is a Complete Victory. On any less level of victory, you have to narrate some reason why the opponent is not eliminated. There are several ways to do this. The first is simple escape. The opponent simply runs off. For major villains, invent an "escape rout" that they've thought of previously. This is a classic convention Note that you can have subsequent contests to catch up with the oppnent, and more fights potentially, etc, etc. So long as it's dramatic.
Similarly, there's the Interruption. The authorities come along and break up the fight (this one is fun, because you can allow a retry now, given that it's a new circumstance with new consequences). Or you've given him a scratch for -1, but he falls into the river and is swept away (call this the Aragorn Escape). Or the characters are physically separated - in a modern case, they're fighting on the tracks, and then a train comes between them.
There's another, more subtle technique, too, that involves player complicity. That is, I ask my players, "Do you want them to get away? Or you can capture them, understanding that your characters are, for some reason, not going to kill them?" The players have to abide by the outcome of the contest. If it's not a complete victory, we can narrate capture, as long as said capture does not eliminate the opposition. Sure, you can have an interrogation contest subsequent to get info out of them. But you can't kill them. If the players feel that "my guy would kill 'em" then they've decided that the character escapes, as the capture option does not, then, fit the outcome generated.
Even more complexly, a player and narrator may tacitly agree that the villain in question really no longer deserves to live. That it's not going to be fun to protract out his existence. In that case, then marginal victory means that the source of the conflict has been transformed, if you will. Yes, the villain is captured. But now there must be some new contest to kill him. The book mentions this method. Perhaps the contest to kill him is now a roll against the character's own piety level, or some resistance representing his moral compass that tells him that killing in cold blood is bad. As Jane mentions, complete victory overcoming an impediment to kill then results in the player never having to roll to overcome that resistance again... in other words, the player has become somewhat sociopathic (compare to Unknown Armies "Madness Meters"). Or, perhaps it's as simple as overcoming somebody's objection to killing the downed villain. Or... well, whatever is dramatic.
Or just kill them. If, in fact, this is the climax of the story, and all we're looking for is how the hero will react to his down foe who we've decided no longer has plot immunity... well, then, yeah, just allow it to be an automatic victory.
The point of all of this is that it's only if you use the system in a pro-forma fashion in terms of goals that you run into the problem mentioned. If you work with the players to understand that the outcomes of contests are dramatic conventions (as opposed to some simulation of success/failure), then it all works quite well, and, instead of having these problems, you have really intensely dramatic play. There will still be cases where the players have their characters killing captured foes... but mechanically we'll all feel that it has dramatic weight.
There are some players who avoid this sort of drama like the plague, wanting really to just have a power fantasy where they don't want to have to deal with such issues - their characters are beyond issues of whether or not they're capable of killing (I think this should be reserved for only veteran characters, but that's another issue). Call this Chuck Norris style of play. Used to other games where contests cannot be about whether a character can decide to take a particular sort of action, they want to simply make all such decisions themselves. That's fine, but for these players, that simply means that, if you're deciding as narrator that a villain has plot immunity, that anything less than a Complete Victory means villain escape or interruption, etc. Not capture. For that final fight, it's "To the Death!" Cater to the player's desires here.
But, that said, for every such player that I've exposed to dramatic issues in play, they've adapted to it just fine. Truth be told. I think that Chuck Norris style play really comes about due to other systems or narrator complicity (which can come from not understanding the alternative). Just what I've seen.
The system can support the sort of play that's being sought here. It just has to be used in a manner that aims for drama, not mechanistic simulation.
Mike
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