Swashbuckling adventure always seems so appealing on paper. Danger,
romance, duels, sudden turns of luck and all that acrobatic swinging
from chandeliers stuff sounds great. But in practice it's hard to get
the buy-in from players. After all, much of the appeal from
swashbuckling is constant trouble- and then getting out of it. Problem
with that is that so few players I have ever famed with like to set
themselves up for problems. My dear, late friend Matt, for instance
lived for having his characters put through the wringer. Kill his
character's family, have his character's best friend betray him, put
his character's beloved in harm's way, and he was happy. But my
experience is that more player will have their characters be
friendless orphan drifters to avoid the "gotcha" of possible surprise
character drama.
I don't want that to come off as a complaint. It's just and
observation that what works in books and movies may be less successful
at the game table. Or at least harder to encourage in play.
It may just be that the easiest genre to emulate may me the
picaresque. From Lazarillo de Tormes to Huck Finn to Fafhrd and the
Grey Mouser, the unpredictable adventures of generally likeable rogues
stumbling into trouble and figuring their way out through cunning and
street smarts with a little humor thrown in seems to me a better model
of traditional RPGs than anything else I can think of.
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I have found that a good in play screw over always works. A villain gains a lot of weight once he's sold the PCS into slavery,or framed them for a crime. I think it's also important to be patient. The proper screw over should be a couple of play sessions in the making at the very lest. it works especially well if you can lure the players into doing it to themselves.
ReplyDeleteI think you're probably right--most of the players I know are extremely cautious with their characters and rarely if ever do the sorts of fun and foolhardy things that make up swashbuckling adventure. I think if the DM wants a swashbuckling type of game, he needs to make sure the players are into it from the beginning and understand that what type of campaign it is they're playing (and perhaps reward whoever can come up with the most over the top way to solve a straightforward problem!)
ReplyDeleteIt certainly depends on the group. My players tend to get into even more trouble than I can get them out of, and I know I cause my DMs similar problems.
ReplyDeleteSome systems, like FATE, reward characters for taking the hard way, if suiting to the character, and playing to genre convention with in game currency (fate points in the case of the FATE system).
ReplyDeleteAnd, of course, some players do not need encouragement to have their character suffer.
Actually, I had a hard time getting players to grok FATE, though in theory I like the idea that negative traits and in-genre activity are rewarded.
ReplyDeleteThough people like my friend Matt are out there, and I certainly like to bring on suffering to my own characters (I'm kind of hoping that my character in a 4e game my friend is running dies in some heroic/foolish manner in the not so distant future...), I find it's hard to find or even nurture that approach in actual play.
The good thing about picaresque adventure is that finding trouble isn't as forced. Players are often outsiders, and encouraging them to be (lovable) rogues helps them choose trouble through doing fun but dumb things rather than raining sorrows on them, which may feel more like picking on them.
I think Ye Auld Game isn't really designed to encourage noble swashbuckling. It doesn't reward such things. I think games like FATE and PDQ do that well if the players all get it. But it occurs to me that you could work it in D&D if you retooled the XP rewards. Frex, in a swashbuckling game, you shouldn't get XP for treasure. But you should get XP for falling into passionate love (preferably with a woman who hates you or doesn't know you exist); for suffering for that love; suffering for a noble ideal; and so on.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I think players are usually all about the XP. Make the XP reward clear and play will follow.
A lot of players don't play "friendless orphan drifters" so much "to avoid the 'gotcha' of possible surprise character drama" but to avoid failing and getting screwed over by the GM. If you want players to swashbuckle, don't pile on the negative modifiers when they start swinging from chandeliers, thus punishing them for swashbuckling, and let them highly competent characters that will almost always succeed like Athos, Porthos, Aramis, D'Artagnan, Robin Hood, Dirty Harry, Conan, James Bond, and so on. If they know they can swing from the chandeliers and take on 20 goons and walk away with only a few scratches, the players will do it. If they are going to fall, fumble, trip, and get beaten to a pulp or fear that they will if they try such things, then they won't do it.
ReplyDeleteGetting people to swing from chandeliers is trivial. The trappings of swashbuckling a easy. But getting to the meat of swashbuckling -- the failed romances, the betrayals and intrigues, that's the challenge. That takes trust in the idea that the drama isn't all a big screw- over, and that the goal isn't always to win. That certainly isn't true to the genre, either. Rather, frequent failures and reversals are, which is much harder to pull off.
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