Levels of Trust in RPGs

When you start playing tabletop RPGs with new people you quickly start figuring out the level of trust that's the norm in the group - how much can you trust those people not to screw you over given the opportunity. Taking a more conscious look at it might help start a conversation about what is the expected gaming etiquette.

Trust Level 0 - the weak are meat

At Trust Level 0, everyone is always on guard and looking for a way to got one over the other players and NPCs. You can expect stuff like mind control, mind reading, vampiric blood bonds, actively stealing from one another, backstabs, betrayals, or even stuff like murdering another PC and stripping their corpse of anything valuable. The GM might also be in on it, using cheap tricks against the PCs, trying "gotchas" to get them poisoned, mind controlled or the like.

Metagaming is the norm - any information you have about the other characters can and will be used against them, and metagrudges will be held - "you killed my previous character, now his son is here to avenge his father".

Generally, this is the sort of stuff you see on /r/RPGHorrorStories. Games filled with munchkins, murderhobos, minmaxers, metagamers and everything in between, because the weak are meat, and the strong do eat. But there is hope on the horizon if the players grow tired of this type of gaming...

Trust Level 1 - Mexican Standoff / Mutually Assured Destruction

At Trust Level 1, the players along with the GM are at a Mexican Standoff or a Mutually Assured Destruction. They don't want to be the ones to start descending to Trust Level 0, but they don't trust others not to screw them over if given the chance. There is still plenty of distrust around, but at least the bullets and the missiles are not actively flying.

This Trust Level is less about actively fighting other players, but more about keeping things secret and keeping your guard up. You still pass secret notes to the GM, you still go off to roleplay away from others when you have something you need to do in secret, etc. Metaknowledge is still valuable after all - stock up on those nukes in case the cold war goes hot.

If things stay calm and no incidents happen, things can move to the next Trust Level.

Trust Level 2 - Deescalation

At Trust Level 2, you have a group that actually starts to open up and lower one's guard. The players learn that you don't need to keep everything a secret from one another, that there is no active threat of someone screwing you over, etc. There is a general understanding that you shouldn't be using your powers against one another, and even the GM doesn't try pulling anything dirty on you.

At this Trust Level you can still see players try to metagame the game, but mostly by reading the GM - "Me and my friends are invited to another party? I remember the last time we had a party it turned into a few people getting murdered. I'm taking all of the NPCs I care about and hiding in my panic room until it's over!".

If things continue the way they do, things should quickly turn into...

Trust Level 3 - Everything in the open

At Trust Level 3, the group finally starts to really trust one another. People don't mind doing anything secretive out in the open and they know the other players won't betray them. The GM plays fair and doesn't wish for your PC to die.

At this Trust Level, a bit of meta-trust begins to form. If the GM assures you there is nothing to worry about something, you trust their word and go along whatever they were planning. If they put your character in a vulnerable position (capturing you, stealing from you, etc.), you can expect everything to return to normal sooner than later. You can even expect them to go out of their way to save your ass if things don't go the way you planned - if you surrender to your enemies, you can expect a way to get back into the game, but maybe with a hefty life debt to repay...

This Trust Level is a good plateau for most groups, where everyone gets along and there is no (undeserved) PVP, but there is still further one can go.

Trust Level 4 - Trust Fall

At Trust Level 4, things begin to horseshoe a bit. While at Trust Level 3 you knew other players wouldn't do anything against you, on Trust Level 4 you once again encourage other players and the GM to do bad things with your character. Once again things like mind control, mind reading and so on are on the table, but this time with a strong understanding that it's not a malicious action between the players.

This Trust Level allows you to roleplay those various aspects of the system and the setting with the focus on making a good story, rather than getting one over the other players. When a GM NPC mind controls you, you jump at the opportunity to cross the party in good faith. When it would be cool for another player to betray you, you encourage them. It's all about having fun and trying new things, even if that's something your character wouldn't like to experience.

Why is trust important?

Some of you might be wondering why is trust important in the game. After all, roleplaying a paranoid person should be equivalent to roleplaying someone trusting, right? Well, there are a few things to it.

First of all, short-term stress can be fun (roller coasters anyone?), but a prolonged stress just induces anxiety and other negative feelings. At low Trust Levels, you might not be looking forward to your game, but feeling stressed about the prospect of spending another long evening worrying. It's not a fun space to be in repeatedly.

Secondly, being paranoid eats away your time. You spend hours worrying about stuff, both in-game and out, and you waste a lot of game time preparing for something that might not come. Recently I've listened to the first episode of Congenials, wherein one player spends over half an hour just setting up plans to secure a safe storage facility for loot they might be getting from some ancient tomb. This was despite them already having an okay storage facility operated by the Guild. But because the player was paranoid of that security not being enough, they spend that extra half an hour lining things up, only for the party to end up not taking the loot from the tomb in the end. So not only was that preparation needless in the end, the GM is not the kind of person to steal stuff from the players, so it was double unnecessary in the end.

Thirdly, having to devote so much resources to protecting yourself means you don't get to explore some weirder character options. Maybe you have an idea for a character that's pretty weak and can't defend themselves, one that's so far from being min-maxed anyone could take them in a fight. At Trust Level 0, they would probably be killed for their starting gear, but at Trust Level 3, you could actually have fun with them.

Lastly, it can be frustrating for a GM to deal with paranoid players. It might be a funny to joke about not wanting to go into the creepy mansion that's obviously haunted, but if that's the encounter the GM prepared for the evening, that's where the characters should be heading. It's not fun trying to wrangle and herd the cats that don't trust the GM not to walk them to their doom. Same about players that take half an hour to cross an empty hallway because they have been conditioned to expect traps, and same with ones that don't want to engage with your plot mcguffin because "never use unidentified magical items, they might be cursed".

Because of all of these reasons, and probably many more, building a level of trust in your group is important. It makes the game more enjoyable and saves you time.

Conclusions

There are different levels of trust you can have in a tabletop RPG, with different behaviours being the norm from both the players and the GM. If you find yourself wanting to play at a higher Trust Level than the one you're stuck in, talk to each other about it and maybe you can start de-escalating the tensions until you reach your happy level and enjoy your game more.

What do you do? What do you want to accomplish? Why do you do it? Three core questions for PC actions

A good part of any RPG session revolves around character actions, asking questions like "a goblin jumps out of a bush with a sword, what do you do?". However, what might be overlooked at times is that there is more to character actions than just what they are literally doing, often it's more important to ask the players what do they want to accomplish, as well as why are their characters doing something?

In general, any action would focus on "A character does an Action because they want to achieve an Outcome in service of their Goal or Belief". An Action is what the character does - "I punch him". An Outcome is what the character wants to accomplish - "I want to intimidate this guard into running away by punching him". Their Goal or Belief should be guiding their actions - "I need to get to the palace to do X, therefore I will intimidate this guard into running away by punching him".

The problem arises when there is a disconnect between these parts. When a pacifist gets the case of a goblin brain and decides to kill someone for no reason, when the characters get too caught up in the turn-to-turn action and lose sight of why they are doing something, or when a desired Outcome is not communicated clearly and say, instead of rolling to intimidate with punching you break out the combat rules to track individual HP, the session can start suffering for it.

In a good deal of older games, it's up to the GM and the players to figure these things out and call for rolls appropriately.

There are some games that focus on the Outcomes more explicitly, such as Burning Wheel or Mouse Guard, where both sides in each conflict have to explicitly state what they want to achieve if they win. Similarly, many Powered by the Apocalypse games like Fellowship codify actions into Moves that provide the players with outcomes that can guide them into choosing the correct Action to take.

Few games that I've come across seem to focus on asking the characters "why do you do it?". Often they come up in a form of characters having explicit beliefs that should be invoked and challenged regularly, such as in the case of Burning Wheel or Star Trek Adventures. These either give mechanical advantage to a roll, or give the character XP for reflecting on them after they are challenged in pursue of their immediate goals.

You will also often see the difference between Action and Outcome focus when comparing lighter systems with something more crunchy. Comparing Exalted with Fellowship for example, in the former you can attempt to dodge or parry an attack, while in the latter you would Overcome it, aka avoid the damage by whatever narrative means you need. Similarly, in Exalted you can try hurting someone with Brawl, Archery, Melee, or even Athletics, while in Fellowship you would just Finish Them with Blood to kill them. The former focuses on the Actions, while the latter - on Outcomes - "I don't want to be hurt", "I want to hurt them".

While often things are very simple - "I want to kill the goblin, because the goblin wants to kill me and they are what stands between me and the loot" - when things get muddled it's often good to pause and make sure everyone is on the right page before going deeper into the weeds.

If you are a GM and the players seem to go off the rails in some weird way, maybe it's time to ask them those magical questions - "What do you do? What do you want to accomplish? Why do you do it?". It can help players ground themselves and explain their logic so that the adventure can resume with everyone knowing what's going on.

The game is not about that - iHunt, money, and mechanic as a metaphor

Recently, my group and I ran a one-shot of the iHunt RPG. It's a game about being a monster hunter in the gig economy. You're perpetually poor, and hunting monsters for cash is the preferable alternative to getting evicted. The game requires a bit of a cognitive shift from your traditional games, which is what we are here to talk about today.

This post is based on a preview version of iHunt, so final mechanics might change.

Our interview about the game with Olivia Hill

During our first session, one of the PCs got shot with a bullet and was in need of medical attention (you are playing fragile humans after all). When discussing our options, one of the players started solving the problem by trying to pin down some numbers - "how much did we earn from killing that vampire?", "what's the standard rate for a vampire? Is that even listed in the book?", "how much does a hospital visit cost?", "how much does a street doctor charge?", etc. However, as we found out, the game (at least in its current, preview state) didn't have any of those prices listed, because that's not what the game is about.

iHunt is a game about being a poor person that turns to hunting monsters to make ends meet. Money is always fickle and doesn't stick. You might earn $10k in a day, but that's cash, not wealth, it's a windfall that comes and goes. There is a reason iHunt and FATE in general doesn't have a space on your character sheet to put your gold pieces in - the game is not about that.

Now, this was frustrating for the player. The game is about playing a person that cares about the money, but the game does not care about the money. You may want to get invested in the character getting ahead and lifting themselves out of the rut they're in, but by the dint of what the game is about, your character will never get out of their hole as long as they are a character. Otherwise, they wouldn't have a motivation to go iHunting.

The mechanic of how money is handled (or the lack of said mechanic) is one of those rare "mechanics as a metaphor" moments, where a mechanic exists not only to serve a purpose, but to convey a deeper message - "money is fickle, it comes and goes". Heck, later in episode 2 we came up with something similar - when a player sold some extra stuff they stole for cash, they didn't just add some numbers to their gold coin total (since again, the game does not track that), but instead they receive a temporary bonus in form of a FATE Aspect. The character was now Flushed with Cash, which they could tap into to get a temporary roll bonus in the future, after which the Aspect would fade, just like that extra cash in your wallet.

Both of those mechanical ways of dealing with money conveyed a message that was congruent with what iHunt is about - money is fickle, it comes and goes.

Sometimes playing games like this requires one to unlearn some tropes one picked up from other games. Going from D&D into iHunt (or many other games) one might start asking "what's your alignment?", "how much can I carry?", "where is the gear list?", "what damage bonus does this weapon have?", "what's my AC?", "what are my saving throws?", "how do I level up?", etc. The answers to all of them would be "the game is not about that. Unlearn what you have learned and see the world from a new perspective".

Talk about your game and communicate with each other!

In the vein of the last post, let's talk about another important thing that doesn't seem to be hammered in often enough - communication. RPGs are a social activity. It's a shared story you all weave together. It's not something owned by any one person, everyone at the table is contributing (no game, asides the worst case of railroading, is owned by the GM!). So if you have a cool idea about what should happen in the game, here is a magic trick - talk with each other about it.

The GM is not a psychic, they can't read your mind to know exactly what you want out of the game. Better yet, give them wholesale ideas they could use. Telling your GM "hey, I want to get rich" is nice to communicate your character's desires, but giving that GM a plan to heist a bank, complete with some NPC ideas, what security they might have and other plot hooks takes a load off their shoulders. Mind you, you should keep things concise at least in the pitch stage, since few people have the patience to read multiple pages of stuff, but a brief summary to get the ideas across might just do the trick.

Even if you don't give the GM the complete adventure you want to have, sometimes discussing how the session goes might still be helpful. Sure, sometimes you want to be in the dark about some things, and that's a good rule to keep in mind if that's what you're going for, but sometimes knowing a bit of what's coming up can help you strategise and get over bumpy parts of the adventure.

(I know it's not for everyone, but sometimes even if you know what the adventure will be, it can still be fun to play through. Heck, once we ran Storms of Yizhao, didn't like how it turned out, workedhopped a fix for the adventure, and then ran it one more time knowing the ins and out of the module while still having fun)

This can go both ways too - perhaps the GM has prepared an adventure for the players that requires a bit of buy-in ("Hey, I have 'Fane of the Night Serpent' adventure module. Heads up - this module expects you to sell yourself into slavery as the main way of getting in. Everyone cool with that?"). Communicating that clearly up-front can save some cat herding during the actual game itself. And hey, if players have some issues with the premise of the game, you can discuss it ahead of time and think of a solution before investing half a session getting to a point of contention and dropping the adventure altogether due to some disagreements.

Communicating outside of the game can also help you facilitate the Watsonian vs. Doylist decisions. Me as my character might not want to get beaten up and put into jail, but me as the player might be totally on board with that situation because it sounds fun to roleplay.

In general, talking about what you as the player or the GM want out of the game in general and any particular session in particular and agreeing on what's the best plan is can ensure people get the most fun out of the game.

It's good to let people know what you'd like to see happen, and also raise any concerns about some problems you might be seeing. It's good to address those early on before they snowball into something more toxic if left unaddressed. Maybe the party is turning into murderhobos and you don't want to have another one of those games, or maybe they aren't murderhobo enough and you're not having fun with your chaotic evil death knight. Communicate about those issues when they come up, otherwise you might be left stewing for awhile while nothing gets fixed. GMs and players aren't psychic, talk with them.

Similarly, make sure to clear some major twists, reveals and wacky ideas you have with your GM ahead of time if you have any doubts they might work. One fun story about that in our game is when we played AMP Year One. One of the characters was a super strong soccer mom that lost custody of her kid after getting into an accident. Since the PCs started working with a criminal organisation, they decided to pull some strings and surprise the PC with getting her full custody of her child. Spoiler alert, the PC surprised the entire group, GM included, by revealing her character was repressing that her kid died in that accident, so whoever the poor kid was that the NPCs have brought in wasn't her child. It was a fun moment and a fun twist, but yeah, clear such things with the GM ahead of time ;) . Other things that need to be communicated - clearing up any wacky rules / power combos you want to use to some great effect that aren't obvious, or could be interpreted in different ways. You don't want to spend a whole session or two building up to a crescendo that fizzles out because the GM interpreted a rule differently than you.

The same communication advice can be applied in the other direction as well - if a GM has an idea for something interesting to do with a character that might be risque or imposing something about their past or present situation, it might be worthwhile to check with the player ahead of time. Introducing a new relative, some friend, a new detail about their past, putting them in danger seemingly out of the blue etc. would fall into this category. Of course, you don't have to reveal every upcoming twist (one of our favourite examples of a cool twist the player did not see coming was Boundless Jurisdiction checking up on his husband in Gangs of New Gloam, not realising how he has moved on...). How often you check in will depend on your mutual trust and preference in the end, understandably.

So yeah, all in all:

• Nobody is psychic, don't expect people to know something you don't communicate clearly
• Talk about expectations, hangups, problems, etc.
• If buy-ins for adventures or some obtuse adventure moon logic might be an issue, best communicate them ahead of time
• If you have some cool ideas of what could or you'd like to happen, let them be known
• Clear important things with your GM about your character's backstory, important twists, and any weird things you are basing your plans on
• Clear things with your players about new things you want to introduce to their backstory
• In general, communicate with each other!

Agree on your game's vision before you start playing

Over the years, my group has learned that it's important to nail one thing down before a game starts - its vision, an agreed vision of what the game is about, what are the core assumptions, etc. Having something like that in place can help a lot when it comes to keeping the game focused.

A game's vision can be something very simple. In our Fellowship - The Deeps it started off as "we want to play a Fellowship game about sailing the ocean". This informed the setting - an archipelago with plenty of water to go about, the characters - all having to have a reason to be on the boat together, etc. Later, as characters got fleshed out the concept evolved further - the game was also about an Heir opposing an evil ruler Overlord to dethrone them and take their place, and other characters whose goals would align with that objective.

The vision will also help you figure out what the game is not about. In the Deeps, we weren't going to turn our sailing ship into a flying ship, because that would go against our goal of sailing the ocean and having ocean adventures. In Heaven For Everyone, our goal was to:

1. Play teenage demigods in the 80s
2. Have no clue what's going on
3. Focus on family life and school life
4. Try to be good people
5. Have our actions have consequences

With such clear goals, you could fall back on them whenever you'd want to do something drastic with your character. Would it be useful for a character to run away from their family and ditch school not to be bogged down? Sure, but that goes against the game's vision, so you won't do it. Would it be easy to declare yourself a living god-king and kill all the other supernaturals? Yes, but that's not what the game is about. Should the GM introduce a character that knows what's going on and explains everything to the players? Probably not, because we're meant to not have a clue of what's going on - it's part of the fun.

Making the vision does not mean you have to reveal everything the game is about. For our Conspiracy at Krezk game, we as players decided to be in the dark as to what would be the mystery of the game, so the GM kept us in the dark about those things. We still agreed what some other constraints about the game were (something along the lines of "you live in Krezk, you want what's best for the town, you're 'adventurers', so you'll put yourself in trouble because it needs to be done, etc."), but we had fun experiencing the mysteries slowly revealing themselves over time.

Of course, your game's vision is not set in stone - over time you ought to revisit it and maybe change it as it suits your game. Maybe some assumptions didn't make sense, or maybe you've gotten all the fun you could've had out of these ideas. For example, after a dozen episodes of Heaven for Everyone, we're pretty much done with our characters doing bits of school life, and we'll probably be transitioning that into some other scenarios, like internships or what have you. Your visions are your game's guiding compass, but it's okay to change course if that's what you want to do consciously.

Our group also has a few good examples of when we didn't nail down a vision in mind and things went a bit awry.

For our Fellowship of Cybertron game the GM wanted us "to be Autobots that fought in the Great War", but didn't state that clearly enough, so our party consisted of two Decepticons, an unaligned character and one Autobot. One character slept through most of the war, one was on a colony for the entirety of it, one was made not so long ago, and only one had some deeper connection with the war. We still had fun in the game and the GM still ran it, but for the follow-up season he made sure to clearly state and enforce the vision.

In our Godbound: Living Years game, we had two characters that were nobles. One of them wanted to restore the land of Ancalia that has been devastated by a zombie plague and give ownership of it back to the mortal nobles, while the other wanted to rule the land himself and do away with a lot of the old ways. The two character concepts were often at odds with one another through the entire game since neither of those goals were clearly stated before the game started, and both character concepts were very focused on bending the setting to their vision. It caused a lot of tension in the party and was very stressful to play through.

So if you are starting a game, consider sitting down together and deciding on what your game's vision will be. Once everyone has agreed on what it is through whatever means, it might be easier to keep the game focused and have something to point to when deciding if a character or story idea fits with the game.

Hopefully this will help you avoid having that one loner evil character in a game where you're all supposed to be heroic good people ;).

Related posts:

• The Doylist choices in role play games

Punch me in the face for XP - the failure of CoD beats system

Chronicles of Darkness is a pretty great series of games. It fixed a lot of things that were wrong with the oWoD and nWoD series and added a few interesting elements of its own as well. However, one thing I'm finding less and less fun the more I play is the beats system. While it seems fun at first, it starts to incentivise the wrong things after awhile. So today, let's talk about beat farming!

Beats - the small XPs

Beats system in CoD is a replacement of the traditional World of Darkness XP system. Both of them are radically different from systems like D&D - you don't get XP for killing enemies, but for things like accomplishing goals, roleplaying, or in general - having life experiences.

In the first edition of the New World of Darkness, you would gain XP at the end of the session or story based on things like "has your character learned anything?", "did you roleplay them in an entertaining or appropriate way?", "did you perform a heroic act?", etc.

Those were a bit hard to judge at times and often felt a bit contrived. "What did I learn today? Um, let me spin the Wheel of Morality real quick and come up with something". Worst yet - the system can also feel like a further downer after a session that might've not gelled as much. I remember feeling quite shitty after playing in a session that wasn't that great to begin with and the GM sternly proclaiming at the end everyone got the minimal, 1XP. Everything else about that game has since faded from my memory, but that one thing still feels bad...

But luckily, CoD is here to solve that problem with beats! Now each XP is broken down into 5 beats, and you accrue those beats through the game through a number of concrete ways. You get a beat when you accomplish a goal you set for yourself, when you complete a condition, when you get a dramatic failure, when you risk a breaking point (essentially losing sanity or humanity), or even when you get beaten up.

All of those conditions are concrete - it is clear when they are supposed to happen and you can proudly exclaim that you are getting that beat and why. The system is much neater and feels better. However, as anything that's driven by the actions of the PCs, it can get exploited a bit...

Beat farming - stopping the game to get your numbers up

Beat farming in CoD is perhaps the last vestige of minmaxing left from the older editions of the system. You can only get one beat from a given category of beat conditions per scene, but given that you have 3-5 scenes in a session, you can rack up quite the number of beats easily.

Generally, there are a few concrete ways you can reliably get beats in the game. First two are dramatic failures and Inspired cycling. You build your character up so they have at least one very crappy roll (1-2 dice max), and then at least one roll they can use often they are very good at. Usually for the last you combine high dice number with Professional Training 2 (9-again), or Trained Observer (9-again or 8-again).

Then each scene proceed to use your weak skill until you fail, upgrading that into a dramatic failure (giving you a beat), and then using your strong skill to get an exceptional success. While exceptional successes don't get you a beat straight away, the rules state that if that check doesn't have a specific exceptional success bonus, the character should get a beneficial condition. You opt to get Inspired, a condition that you can cash in for a willpower point, a beat, and an exceptional success on 3 successes instead of 5. This means whenever you roll your strong skill, you spend a willpower point (giving you extra 3 dice), spend the Inspired condition (getting that willpower back) and fingers crossed - you get that condition back again instantly. Rinse both each scene for 2 beats per scene.

In Mage the Awakening, I'm not sure whether by design or by accident, whenever a character completes an Aspiration (their short or long term goal), they get a new Aspiration. Moreover, higher-end Mages have more and more "Obsessions" - long-term Aspirations focused on supernatural things. You can cash both an Aspiration and an Obsession each scene for a beat and an "arcane beat" (beat you can only spend on magic stuff). This can start derailing the characters into "my current aspiration is to go to where the next scene is and do what we were planning to do anyway" and "I want to learn more about the particular supernatural creature we're currently investigating". This stops being conductive to "emergent gameplay" and just becomes a race to get more and more beats...

Moreover, Mages can also farm Arcane Beats by resolving conditions imposed by spells. The book even explicitly states that farming beats this way is normal. In a sidebar section called "The Beat Goes On..." we read - "At this point, you may be wondering what’s stopping you from loading up on Condition-causing spells in a relatively safe environment, resolving them all, and earning Beats by the bucket load? The honest answer is “nothing, mages do it all the time.”...". This means if you have a Mage with Fate 2 in your party, you can cast Exceptional Luck each scene, giving everyone in the party a beneficial condition they can use and gain a beat that way.

Finally, at the end of a scene, you can just punch each other in the face and get a beat (at least if you're mortal - supernaturals might have to cut one another up for it). If you take damage in your last three health boxes, you get a beat. For an average person, you need about 5 points of bashing damage, which heals after 75 minutes - most often enough for a scene change. Punch each other in the face each scene and farm those precious beats...

So if you're hard-core, each scene you can get a beat for damage, dramatic failure, fulfilling a condition and fulfilling an aspiration rather easily. That's a beat shy of a full XP each scene, so you might end up with about 4XP at the end of a session - which is an insane amount (1XP is healthy for a normal session). Would the game be fun though? Heck no...

Mechanics distracting from the game

Discovering an exploit in a game can be fun. It makes you feel smart for noticing the various mechanics that make something up, you go through the rush of research as you dig deeper into the problem and finally you have the sense of mastery as you figure out the most optimal way of abusing the exploit. It is fun, but that's not what Chronicles of Darkness, or RPGs in general are about.

Sure, you can have a group that's all about deriving fun from breaking a game and exploiting the mechanics, do that by all means. You can similarly enjoy the Ivory Tower Game Design, but after awhile it feels like a system that punishes sub-optimal play.

Recently my group and I have switched systems in one of our game from Savage Worlds to Chronicles of Darkness. A new player joined us that didn't have experience with CoD. We had fun with the session, but by the end I came out of that session with 6 beats, and the other players had only 3 beats a piece. I am by no means a better player than them, nor was my character a more important part of that story. The only difference was I knew how to farm beats and I made a character that allowed me to farm beats. Since we're all loss-averse by nature, seeing someone get twice as many beats was most likely not a pleasant experience. We started using group beats since that point...

In a different session, one of our players cared about a particular NPC - they were tied to their backstory and so on. When my character failed a roll related to helping that NPC investigate their missing father however, I decided to cash it in for a dramatic failure and a beat, much to the dismay of the other player. The failure was not important to my character, but it was going against what the party wanted to accomplish. If we continued on this path for a longer game, we'd probably all start screwing the party over with dramatic failures sooner or later. Luckily it was a shorter game and we learned our lessons.

Cut the beats

Honestly, I feel if the beat system was cut entirely from CoD, the system might be better for it.

Say, if the players and the GM agreed to say, give everyone 1-2 full XP per session, that might be a good pace. Aspirations wouldn't give beats, but would be a way to communicate with the GM and the rest of the party what you as the player want out of a given session. Conditions already either give you a bonus when you "cash them in", or get rid of a penalty if they're negative once you get rid of them. Getting beaten up and surviving means you survived a fun action scene and either continue your story, or have some new enemy to beat up in the future. Risking a breaking point is a dramatic enough moment that it is interesting on its own, and finally for dramatic failures - perhaps the GM could offer you a Doylist choice with some kickback if they believe a botch would add to the story. Some of them could give you Willpower - another important resource in the game, or perhaps a reroll you could cash in in the future. Either of those options would be meaningful, but not important enough to heavily encourage the players to derail the game for their own benefit.

So all in all, the beats system in Chronicles of Darkness is an interesting tool, but when taken to its "rational conclusion" - it starts to break down. It's possible the game might be more enjoyable if we weren't chasing that proverbial carrot at any given opportunity...

The Doylist choices in role play games

In the culmination of a recent game of Stars Without Number an interesting trope sneaked up on us. We were fighting the cartoonish villain Thanatosis and her Hungry Boys in a Mad Max style dust thunderstorm. (episode end spoiler alert) After having her tank blown open and surviving a sniper rifle shot to the back of her head, she decided to retreat away from battle and ride away into the dust storm cursing the name of one of the PCs.

Our characters could've pursued her and put her down without too much trouble, and at least one PC did want to do that, but as players we decided to let her go. On one hand, it was because our characters had other things to attend to, on the other hand, it made more sense from the narrative perspective to have her as a new nemesis that may one day return to fight our characters.

Thinking and talking it over later, that's how I stumbled upon the "Watsonian vs. Doylist" trope.

Watsonian vs. Doylist trope

The Watsonian vs. Doylist trope related to the dichotomy between the character in a story and the author of that story, or in RPG space - the player character and the player. It refers to Sherlock Holmes and two types of commentary you could have on the events of the book - the perspective of the in-universe Dr. Watson, explaining things as he understands them, or from the out-of-universe perspective of the book's author, Arthur Conan Doyle, explaining things as the author of the book.

An example of this trope is trying to answer the question of "why are there so many human-like aliens in Star Trek?" Watsonian answer is that an ancient humanoid race seeded the galaxy with all of those aliens. The Doylist answer is that making human-like aliens is cheaper for the show and allows the audience to understand the characters easier. Both sides answer the same question in a relevant manner, but give incompatibly different reasonings.

The Watsonian choices

In terms of role play games, we often focus on playing our characters in a Watsonian way - we are very attached to our character, want to play them "optimally" and make sure we don't leave any hanging threads the GM could try to weaponize against us later. This is basic human nature - we are very loss-averse, and since we associate our characters as being a representations of us, we don't want to see them die.

This is a fine approach to take, but at the same time, it makes the characters act too neatly and perfectly. They don't make too many mistakes, they don't act impulsively against their better judgement, etc.

One approach I've seen this issue addressed was the Limit Break mechanic in Exalted. This is a mechanic that helps the characters act like the classical tragic hero of myth they are meant to emulate. Basically, the characters accumulate emotional baggage over time until they snap and take the self-destructive course of action - they might blindly charge into battle to their possible death, lash out at their allies straining that relationship, or may be frozen with indecision at the climax of a conflict.

The Doylist choices

On the other end of the spectrum, we would have the idea of playing the character in a Doylist way - making decisions that tell the better story, but may go against what's best for the character in question. This would mean letting some antagonists live so they may become a nemesis for the character, or deciding to go on a drunken bender and break the law so the player could be cased with the challenge of escaping the police or having to cover something up.

A good example of taking the Doylist choice comes from Roll Play Swan Song, an actual play game of Stars Without Number. (spoiler alert for Week 1 and a game-long side-plot) In the first session of the game, one of the PCs, Higgins, ran into an old contact, Randy, that helped them get off the planet with an unknown parcel for their mission. In exchange, Randy wanted to get a ride off the planet - easy enough, basically a free favour. However, Higgins' player decided it would be more interesting to betray Randy at the last moment, shooting him in the head on the landing pad, in order "not to leave any lose threads".

Because of that action, the character has antagonised a criminal to whom Randy owed some money. This would later mean they would have a bounty hunter come after their heads. When the players would return to the planet later to help save some civilians, Higgins would be recognised by the military, making him have to flee and possibly leaving a lot of people to die. In the final episode of the game, Randy would also make a return with a cybernetically fixed head only to snipe Higgins dead as a revenge (luckily, Piani was there to psi-heal his exploded head back up).

All of this happened because the player decided to take the Doylist choice (the player even confirmed the choice was deliberately made to make the game more interesting). The game and the podcast were better for it, even if the character had to suffer because of it.

I think I saw the Doylist approach in the actual game books only twice. Chronicles of Darkness give the player the choice when their characters botch their rolls in exchange for XP.

The only diegetic example of this approach could perhaps be found in Exalted: The Fair Folk. In the world of Exalted, there exist entities known as Rakshasa, The Fair Folk. They are being made out of the primordial chaos from outside of the world that assume humanoid shapes to weave narratives to strengthen themselves. Essentially, they act out stories and conflict like actors (meaning playing Rakshasa is the player playing a character playing a character). Rakshasa become more powerful the more connections they have, meaning they seek to cultivate a web of nemesis, rivals, lovers, underlings and so on. This means for them the Watsonian and Doylist choices are one and the same - the players want to make mistakes because their characters want to make mistakes because that creates a more compelling narrative for them.

But let's reel this back a bit from this crazy meta-example ;).

An agreement between the player and the GM

Obviously, making the Doylist choice in a game leaves the PC and thus the player more exposed to the GM and their narrative. It would therefore be good to discuss this topic ahead of time and develop a mutual understanding between the players and the GM. The GMs shouldn't take those vulnerabilities and possible nemesis and just use them to screw over the player willy-nilly. Just as the player made a wink to the GM while letting that villain go, so should the GM at some point in the future wink back to the player.

If you want to quantify this relationship in some sense, perhaps each time the player makes such conscious Doylist choice, they would get some point or token. In exchange, the GM would get to keep that plot thread or character that would later come back "to take revenge" on that character (in a more narrative sense, there may be no actual killing involved). However, the player could cash those tokens in at any time to get something significant they want. It could be that they would escape being killed in some situation, or be able to get some artefact that would normally be out of their reach, or the like. It would have to be something significant enough to make the Doylist choice worth it, although not as significant as to make it some sort of wish-granting engine ( ;) ). You'd be basically cashing in "I'm not doing the adventure that would've enabled me to get this thing" in exchange for an "IOU of an adventure surrounding this plot at some point in the future".

If the GM brings back that same villain back and they are out for revenge, or the situation bites the players in the ass because of their past mistake, the debt is settled. If that character or plot would come back later again, it shouldn't be any more dangerous than any other adventure would be - you don't necessarily want to have to deal with some crazy person plotting to murder you every other session just because you let them live once.

On the other hand, if the player's overcome the obstacle and they get the upper hand, there is nothing stopping the player from taking another Doylist choice, earning another token and letting the GM keep the villain once more.

Also worth noting is that the "revenge" part of the deal can come in at any point really - if the GM wants the villain to try shooting the PC in the back right after they have been spared by the player, that's fine. If it worked for Dragonball (Goku sparing Frieza only to be shot in the back), it can work for your game too ;).

Conclusions

Players are often inclined to make Watsonian choices to do what's best for their characters and avoid leaving any lose threats least they be used against them. However, sometimes making a Doylist choice would make the story and the character more interesting.

It's good for the GM and the players to discuss this topic and come to some mutual understanding of how they would want to use this approach in their games. The players would be more encouraged to make Doylist choices if they knew the GM would handle that in a responsible manner.