Something interesting to me came up in my writing up of the current state of the characters for the Night Chalice Swords of the Serpentine game. As I wrote up the actual meaning of the PCs Alliance and Enemy ranks in play - to help ground the players and characters more in the fiction and because we had done a Smallville style R-map to get player buy in on their most important NPCs and location theoretically under the Night Chalice's control - I found myself writing out what the effects would be in play if they exercised their option to buy more ranks of allies or by off ranks of enemies.
This is unusual for me, and I suspect for some of the players. The mechanics of it are clear: you spend 3 advancement points, you can get/lose a point of allies/enemies. This isn't uncommon across a lot of games but I know for at least one of the player she hasn't played in things where that's part of the players metacurrency. And that got me thinking about how much this is a very strong tool for player control of the story arc if they choose to use it.
It's obviously a very old one - players have had the ability to buy off enemies they got points for back to Champions (1981) - but I seldom play point build or experience spend to improve games. The last time I ran Gumshoe was for Mutant City Blues, which doesn't have the Allies/Enemies structure. So writing out for Rebecca that if she opts to buy another point of Allies: Church of Denari then her faction in the church will gain ground in the internal political struggle that got her kicked out of the Inquisitors. If she buys off the Enemy: Church of Denari her main rival on the other faction will be discredited and removed (even if that doesn't get her back in the Church) and if I know in advance we can work that into a session; but it might just happen! offscreen! Because life happens when she's not there! She's part of a whole faction that is moving on their own about larger politics. Or her enemy might just get kacked by a demon and Adele might feel moved to look into that threat.
So one one level this isn't really a completely GM controlled game. Players can direct, with their changing ranks of Alliances and Enemies, the direction of the politics and plots. This is more mechanical than players actively pursuing or asking the GM if such things are possible for them to angle for. By deciding to spend 9 advancement points to buy off her enemy and improve her alliance from 1 to 3 Adele can become a major player in church politics, radically altering the power structure of the Night Chalice game.
A big limiter on this behavior is that with bimonthly games we will likely manage six 4-5 hour sessions a year, and 3 Advancement Points annually. It would take 3 years of Play for Adele to do that if she dedicated her time to it. I'm limiting my 'bonus' awards to the players to Wealth earned (of which they still have sizable costs to keep the guild running) and Favors (and Grudges). There's no way to just get a rank in an Ally through in game action. If the point economy of play is built like this than as a game I don't feel the need to meddle with I'm sticking with it.
Still, I find it fascinating as a thought experiment to see if anyone decides to play with this concept.
No comments:
Post a Comment