Great Expectations

This past week Ravyn at Exchange of Realities published a pair of posts on the subject of failure, specifically rules for handling alternatives to outright failure and creating opportunities for failure to be mitigated.

How in blazes is anyone supposed to screw up and then find an oblique way around it when all these failures seem so unrecoverable? When screwing up means going back to the blasted chargen, do not pass go, do not collect any of the local currency—things disappearing forever, things being broken past repair, and nine times out of ten they’re the things that really matter because the GM is fond of gut-punching? So will I fall and not get up?

I rather like the idea of being able to fail in a controlled environment and remember how to Plans B through Z back to something slightly better than the status quo. Second chances. They’re pretty awesome.

It's a subject which generates some heat among gamers, particularly when death is on the line. I've written a couple of times about this already - in short, I disagree with the notion that death is among the 'least interesting' consequences a character can face. If my character can't chance the fate of Vaughn Bodé's Captain of the Guard (warning! NSFW!) - part I | part II | part III - then I'm playing the wrong game. Even so, I do expect other consequences of failure as well, which I'll explore in a another post.

But there was something else which jumped out at me from Ravyn's post.

There’s a lot I like in a character. Justified confidence. The ability to snark anything. Who doesn’t? But my favorites are the ones who fail. The ones who completely screw things up, sometimes repeatedly, and who in the wake of their sequential screw-ups look around, shake their heads, mutter something about how they got to this point, and then get up and start fixing things. The ones whose first plan isn’t quite what’s needed, so they back off, regroup, and come up with another plan. And then another. Who will turn any situation into a plan, and when it fails, just move on to the next letter. Into the next alphabet. Start pulling plan designations from the syllabaries. There are a lot of writing systems out there to name plans after, and these people, as long as they keep surviving their failures, keep learning who they can and can’t trust, who they can stay with and who they need to flee from as fast as is humanly necessary, which solutions work and which don’t and which will probably get everyone they love killed in the process (hopefully they didn’t get that one by experience; that’s depressing)….

Wow. That's a pretty extensive list of expectations to lay at the foot stool of (1) the referee, (2) the other players, and (3) the game, with the belief that all three should work seamlessly together to satisfy them.

Then I find that the tough part is playing them.

Yeah, I would kinda imagine so.

To be perfectly honest, my gut reaction is, 'Fer cris' sake, just write a friggin' story an' be done with it,' but I know it's not really as simple as that. That subset of roleplaying games which explicitly strive to inculcate aspects of collaborative storytelling do have a game element to them which affects play in ways that, frex, online text-based roleplaying generally doesn't. There are twists and turns generated by the rules and randomizers, limitations on the character's power to change the direction of the story, and so forth. These games can provide the 'space to fail' for which Ravyn is looking, in the interest of a compelling narrative.

Proponents of such games often insist that roleplaying games with an emphasis on producing a satisfying narrative are really no different from other more traditional roleplaying games. Perhaps that's true - I haven't enough personal experience with them to say.

But even if the games themselves, viewed from lofty perch of the the cameras aboard the Goodyear blimp Spirit of America, are of a kind, I think the expectations of the players who gravitate to games which, frex, offer conflict resolution over task resolution, say, may be profoundly different. Expecting to play Wesley in my campaign can produce severe cognitive dissonance when you discover that you can end up like Count Rugen instead, and that that's a feature, not a bug.

Another Perspective on the Lightly Armored Fighter

Eric Treasure at The Dragon's Flagon discusses the lightly armed adventurer and the perceived need to make the maille-clad warrior and the swashbuckler 'equal' under the combat rules of many roleplaying games.

Indirectly, the question posed by the knight and the swashbuckler is, should characters in a roleplaying game be balanced to one another, and if so, to what degree? It's a question which generates a strong opinions, in my experience, regardless of the answer.

Let Me Tell You About My Character . . . Again

Following the death of my character, the chevalier de Saint-Sauvan, a few months back, I set about creating a new character for some ongoing Flashing Blades solo play.

Inspired by a number of recent threads at Big Purple on Honor + Intrigue, one of my GM's Day sale purchases, I want to see how La Planche would look in H+I.

H+I suggests beginning by envisioning the sort of character you'd like to play; since this is a conversion of an existing character, that's easy enough. First I need to define my character's Qualities. There are four Qualities - Might, Daring, Savvy, and Flair - and I have a total of four points to spread among them, with a maximum value of 3 in any one them. Looking at my rolled stats, it's clear that La Planche is fairly bright and reasonably personable, but pretty average physically, so I assign his points as Might 0, Daring 1, Savvy 2, and Flair 1. I have to admit, H+I's Qualities are much more 'swashbucklery-sounding' than Flashing Blades' Attributes. So far, so good.

Next I need to define La Planche's Combat Abilities. Once again I have four points to spend on Brawl, Melee, Ranged, and Defense. I can also buy-down to -1 in one area, so given La Planche's skill points invested in the rapier, I give him Brawl 1, Melee 2, Ranged -1, and Defense 2.

Now I select four Heroic Careers for La Plance; as before, I have four points to spend on the four careers as I wish. I know that La Planche wants to be an actor and a bravo, and that's about it. With H+I, I get to pick a little bit of a lifepath and background for La Planche based on the order of the careers selected. I pick Servant/Housekeeper 0, Thief/Soundrel/Vagabond 0, Duelist/Swordsman/Pugilist 2, and Artist/Composer/Performer 2; La Planche was a liveried servant in a bourgeois household but fell in with the wrong element, and after receiving instruction from a fencing master, he decided to put his wits to use in one of the few careers open to someone with his low background, the theatre. I'm a sketchy sort of background guy, so I'm okay with the lack of polish on that.

Moving on, I calculte his Lifeblood, which is ten plus his Might value, giving La Planche a Lifeblood of 10, and his Fortune, which is equal to his Flair + 3, giving him 4 Fortune points at the start. Fortune points appear to be something like action points, and may be earned and spent a variety of ways during the game. La Planche also gets a Composure score, 3 - the same for all characters - which measures a character's "self-discipline."

Next come Motivations. Playing to my character's Motivations allows me to (re)gain Fortune points. For simplicity's sake, since I am a Develop-in-Play guy, not a Develop-at-Start guy, I'll pick just one, Ambition. I'm going to gloss over the backstory for now, for the same reason.

Now I can choose Languages, at a level base on my character's Savvy; I give La Planche Basic knowledge of both French and Provençal. Unlike Flashing Blades, H+I assumes all characters are literate as well.

Boons and Flaws are next. My character gets one Boon, and may add up to two more Boons in exchange for two flaws. For La Planche, I pick Dueling Style (French Style) and Master of Disguise as Boons, and Illiterate as a Flaw.

The last step is equipment, which is assumed to be available appropriate to the character's station.

And . . . done.

I'm impressed by how well I'm able to make such a similar character for both systems. I'm not a fan at all of point-buy character generation, but H+I is simple and intuitive, and again, the results are uncannily similar. This suggests to me that, if faced with generating a character by point-buy, I can roll something else up first and then convert.

Let Me Tell You About Someone Else's Character

Meet Hercule De La Fouchardier, a Flashing Blades character posted on a blog that looks like it was originally intended to be a compendium of character generation examples for different roleplaying games but petered out after a half-dozen examples.

And check out Josh's FB character, Giancarlo di Venezia, featured in a two-part story at The Signe of the Frothing Mug.

I like seeing how other gamers approach the choices that the rules offer for creating a character.

Let Me Tell You About My Character

Roleplaying gamers can be a pretty geeky or nerdy - yes, there is a difference - bunch, but we still have our social taboos, and I am about to break one of those taboos, right here on the intrewebs, for everyone to see, by typing those seven words even gamers dread to hear.

Let me tell you about my character.

My Flashing Blades character for my solo campaign was killed by a rival last month, and since I want to continue with solo campaigning, I decided to generate a new character.

As with many roleplaying games, Flashing Blades character generation begins with determining basic attributes. Characters have a traditional six attributes - Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Wit, Charm, and Luck - generated by an equally traditional 3D6 rolled in order. Using an online roller, the six attribute scores were as follows.

Attribute	Score
Strength	9
Dexterity	12
Endurance	14
Wit	14
Charm	12
Luck	7

So, the character's best attributes are Endurance and Wit, followed by Dexterity and Charm. Luck, on the other hand, is a disappointing seven - I'm unlikely to make this character a gambler, like the chevalier.

The next step is determining the character's Background. Background shouldn't be confused with classes in other roleplaying games. With respect to the rules, Background determines starting wealth, Social Rank, the cost of skills, and access to certain starting careers.

Because skills are based on a attributes, a high attribute score may suggest a particular background. Endurance is only associated with one skill, Carousing, but it also increases a character's hit points and capacity for encumbrance, which is important to characters with the Soldier or Marine Background. A high Wit is associated with many skills, particularly those from the Gentleman Background, such as Banking or Bureaucratics. Dexterity is most useful to the skills associated with the Rogue Background, like Cut Purse, Stealth, and Fine Manipulation.

So, first impression is that this character would make a good Gentleman, perhaps a student of theology peparing for a career in the Church or a royal bureaucrat with aspirations to become a court minister. But after the experience of my last character getting owned by a good but not great bravo, I want a swordsman, and that means putting skill points into the rapier.

I don't just want him to be good with the sword, however - brawling skill is also important in Flashing Blades, and I sometimes found myself lamenting that the chevalier was no damn good at a swift kick or a grapple. The easiest way to do this in FB is by way of the Rogue Background.

Wit is also a decent skill for a Rogue - Bribery, Forgery, and Disguise are all available in the Background skill list, and all are determined by Wit. I've run a lot of characters over the years with Bribery skill - greasing palms for the win - and occasionally Forgery, but rarely have I run a character with a talent for Disguise.

The Disguise skill is also a prerequisite for getting a job as an actor, and now a character is taking shape in my mind, of an itinerant player who doubles as a bravo. In order to be an actor, however, my character would also need a Charm of 13+ and the Oratory skill, which expensive for Rogues.

FB allows me trade attribute scores on a two-for-one basis, so in order to work as an actor I must increase his Charm and I probably want to increase his Wit as well. Endurance is the only score I can afford to sacrifice, so I take four points from his Endurance and add one point each to Wit and Charm. The results look like this.

Attribute	Score
Strength	9
Dexterity	12
Endurance	10
Wit	15
Charm	13
Luck	7

That loss of Endurance is a bit painful, so he's really going to need to be a good swordsman, to avoid getting hit. Still, the fifteen in Wit gives him an extra skill point, a +1 to his fencing Expertise, and provides the basis for his Disguise skill, so it's a useful, if expensive, trade.

One last roll affects his starting attributes. In FB, each character has a height and build, with effects on the physical attributes. I can choose his height or build, and then must roll for the other. A Stocky build is tempting, as it adds an extra hit point, but under my house rules for jumping, it costs him, and I'm thinking I want him to take the Acrobatics skill. A Thin build adds a point of Dexterity, but if he turns out to be Short, he loses Strength and Endurance. So I decide to play it safe, choose Average for his build and roll for his height, which turns out to be Tall. That's good, 'cause it gives him a reach advantage in combat, and his attribute scores are set.

With his attributes set, I can calculate hit points and encumbrance capacity. Every character starts with a base of ten hit points, modified by Strength, Endurance, Luck, and build. His average scores in the first two yield no benefit, and fortunately his below average Luck isn't so low as to cause him a penalty; with his Average build, then, he start with the bog-standard ten hit points. Encumbrance also begins at ten points and is modified by Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, and build as well, but again, his scores are right near the mean, so there are no modifiers.

Now I can move on to skills. Each character in FB gets ten skill points for non-martial skills, modified by Wit and Luck. A fifteen Wit gets him an extra two skill points, and his seven Luck is fortunately not low enough to result in a penalty, for a total of twelve. Here's where Background first comes into play: each Background offers access to a number of skills, with bonus skills costing one point, regular skills costing two points, and skills not on the Background list costing three points. As an actor he must have both Disguise and Oratory - Disguise is a background skill for Rogues, so that costs two points, but Oratory isn't found in the Rogue Background, so that's gonna cost him three points. As I mentioned, Acrobatics is another skill I want my character to have, covering climbing, tumbling, and so forth; it's in the Rogue background, so that's two more points, for a total of seven out of twelve so far.

One more skill point is spent to speak another language; I decide that he's a native Occitan speaker, so that extra point goes into French. Rogues don't begin with literacy, which means that while he speaks two languages, he can neither read nor write. Clearly he learns his parts by rote or improvises his characters.

That leaves me four points to put into Expertise with a weapon, and I choose the rapier.

Martial skills are handled differently from non-martial skills. In Flashing Blades, all characters have some form of swordsmanship training - the goal of character generation in the game, after all, is to produce swashbucklers. With the Rogue Background, my character can take the School of Hard Knocks, which confers Brawling, and a Fencing School, which confers one style of fencing and a +1 bonus to a particular weapon. I choose French Style dueling, and another +1 with the rapier.

With martial skills selected, I can calculate Expertise. Base Expertise with dueling weapons is 10, to which I can add +1 for his Dexterity and +1 for his Wit, giving him a minimum Expertise of 12 with the longsword, rapier, and foil. He also has a +1 with the rapier from his training, and a + 4 with the rapier from skill points, giving him an Expertise of 17 with the rapier. Base Brawling Expertise is 8, again raised by one each for his Dexterity and Wit, for a base Expertise of 10 with his hands and improvised weapons.

Next comes Advantages and Secrets. FB characters may have one Advantage and one Secret; a player can choose to take an Advantage without a Secret at the cost of two skill points, or a Secret with no Advantage to gain a skill point. For this character, I decide to forego both an Advantage and a Secret, preferring to let these sort themselves out in actual play.

Last, I roll for his initial wealth, a 1 on D6, giving him an annual income of 50 £ - that's livres, not pounds - the lowest amount possible for a beginning character in FB. With a Rogue's background, his Social Rank is 2, giving him monthly living expenses of 6 £, and at the end of the year he owes roughly 22 £ in taxes to the Crown and - since I'll make him a Catholic - 20 £ in tithes to the Church. He'll need to work at least six months out of the year as an actor to cover his expenses, plus whatever he can bring in as a sellsword.

Finally, he needs a name. My son and I were playing the LEGO game Pirate Plank earlier in the day - in French, that's La Planche du Pirate. I like the sound of La Planche. He's a native Occitan speaker, so he was born Peyrot La Planca, and uses Pierre La Planche as his stage name. He's originally from Brignoles, and came to Marseille to make his fortune. I have a vague sense of a Saint-like penchant for disguises and false identities.

This will give me an excuse to repurpose the excellent Job Tables from the Tavern Trawling supplement to Backswords and Bucklers - La Planca/La Planche is very much a Basterd for Hiyer, and the tables are well suited to a solo campaign, particularly with the wrinkles which the Mythic Game Master Emulator introduces in play.

Now all I need is a few hours of free time to play.