There are a number of storytelling RPGs out there that have fascinating systems for keeping the story rolling dramatically along. Among my favorites is one of the simplest systems I have encountered. In the game Don't Rest Your Head, your players are insomniacs who have fallen into the Mad City, a place full of living nightmares and insomniacs like them, with powers related to who they were before they entered the Mad City. The system for powers is also one of my favorites--players choose two powers which can be interpreted in a great many ways, and as long as you can rationalize using your power, you are set. But what I want to talk about here is the Hope and Despair mechanic, which you can use in your game to spice up the story.
In Don't Rest Your Head, the GM rolls against any player action. If the GM has more high rolls than the player (determined by who has the most 4s, 5s, and 6s in their pool of d6s), then the game rules dictate that pain dominates the roll (meaning that the majority of high-rolled dice are the GM's). What this means in terms of the game is that the GM takes a token--a coin in most cases--and adds it to a collection called Despair.
Once there is a token in Despair, the GM can use it to affect the narrative of the game. Typically, a GM spends a Despair token in order to complicate things for the players. In the game, you can spend a Despair token to affect the outcome of a single die in any rolled pool, but since I'm suggesting a way to adapt this system to a game like D&D which doesn't use DRYH's rules for rolling dice, I won't go into detail on explaining that. I'll offer an illustration of this system below with an in-game example.
The second step of this process is that when you spend a Despair token, the players get a Hope token. Hope tokens are basically the opposite of Despair tokens--the players use them to change the story slightly to give themselves an advantage. You can see the game logic here: when players suffer setbacks, they gain a proportionate ability to advance. Again, the game dictates that Hope dice change the outcome of any die, but we'll be changing that to suit a D&D-style game.
Before I dive into the example game, let me propose a few options for how to implement this game. We could keep the spirit of the DRYH rule and allow a Despair or Hope token to change the result of a die roll. Within this possibility, we could have the die change to whatever number the GM or player chooses; we might also set a numerical limit on the change, such as granting a roll a ±5 or ±10. We could stick closer to the Inspiration system in D&D 5e and grant a reroll with a Despair or Hope token (basically giving advantage on a roll). In this case, a roll of a natural 1 (or a broader scale, like any roll from 1-4) results in the GM gaining a Despair token. We might also opt for a more organic approach, and say that entire narrative events occur or do not occur based on the use of a Despair or Hope token. If this is the route you choose, the GM should get a Despair token either on bad rolls from the players or when the players create issues--arguing about plans for an extended period of time, getting into unnecessary trouble, slipping up with cover stories. Whichever of these approaches you choose, you'll want to be consistent for the rest of your game (or get unanimous approval from your party to change the ruling).
For my example, I will include a hypothetical game session and depict how to use both the changing-a-roll method and the narrative-shift method. For that hypothetical game, let's use a story-heavy example, as that is what this modification to your gameplay is built to do. Let's say that our party is making its way from one kingdom to a smaller town, where an important NPC has information for them. In order to get there, the party must travel along a dangerous road in the middle of the night or risk not getting the information in time. About halfway through their journey, one player character spots signs of an ambush, but it's impossible to tell where the ambushers are. The party must progress down the road or risk failing their mission.
The first thing that the party does is devise a strategy. If we're using the narrative approach, you as GM want to pay close attention to the nature of the discussion. If a few minutes go by without resolution, you could rule that you gain a Despair token due to their argument. Or if you're using the dice-based approach, a player's poor roll to spot any ambushers could result in the gaining of a Despair token.
Now we need responses--the way we spend the Despair tokens. If we're taking the narrative approach, we can have the ambushers take advantage of the party's discussion and attack them while they plan. Then our Despair token becomes a Hope token. The players might use this Hope token to rebalance the odds in their favor, beat a hasty retreat, or negotiate with the ambushers. You can see how the introduction of these tokens pushes the game's story into increasingly dramatic places quite naturally.
But let's say we've taken the dice-based approach. A player character rolls to see the ambushers, fails badly, and the GM gets a Despair token. Then, when the party actually assaults the ambushers, you as GM have a Despair token to change the combat. Perhaps you empower an enemy to better threaten a player character, or perhaps you reduce a player's good roll with the Despair token, or perhaps the Despair token is used to counter a Hope token from the players. Any of these can happen, and you can see how these changes to rolls make things much more exciting.
The neat thing about these Hope and Despair tokens is that they strive to keep the gameplay balanced. In DRYH, where they are an integral part of the statistical heart of the game, they exist to balance player momentum as both positive and negative things occur. Have you ever been concerned as a GM that you're being too mean or too nice to your players? It's easy to heap on punishment, and some GMs just want to make their players happy. But Hope and Despair tokens automatically fix that. For every step that the GM takes to advance the story and challenge the players, there is a corresponding swing in the players' favor. This is a lovely little measure which can help to keep your game from swinging too far from the center.
My final piece of advice with these tokens is to not hoard them as GM. When I have run games of DRYH, I have often ended up with a healthy stack of Despair tokens that I wasn't spending. I didn't want to sabotage my players, so I didn't make their successes that much harder with the Despair tokens. But once I started to use them, I realized that my players then get Hope tokens. When I wasn't using Despair tokens, I was preventing my players from being able to swing the momentum back their way. So trust in the system and challenge your players--you'll be surprised how they use the Hope tokens in response.
That's all for now. Coming soon: a one-shot adapted from the movie Napoleon Dynamite, mythology by culture in my homebrew world, and how to develop places of interest for a campaign. Until next time, happy gaming!
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