Creating Tension in a session.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Yes, roleplaying is about pouring personal time and effort into creating a fictional persona, and then gambling with that persona (and thus with the time and effort) as your bet while portraying said persona for your own personal amusement

I think that that statement is in danger of being over-interpreted. While I agree that RPGs need to have something at stake to maintain interest in the outcome (just as stories do), I don't think that it has to be the player characters that are the stake. For example, I run a lot of material in which the PCs are police detectives and in which personal violence is uncommon. Sometime I throw in a bit of thriller or action material for interest and variety, but many adventures are police procedure and a bit of wit-pitting to catch villains. (Columbo didn't carry a gun.) In such adventures it is the NPC perpetrator, NPC innocent suspects, and NPC possible future victims that are at stake. The issue is not whether the PCs live or die, but whether they close the case.

For example, I had an adventure that I ran several times to acclaim at a con, and then ran here in the PbP forum. One of the incidents that makes up that adventure is a confrontation with some revolutionaries at a health club, and I believe that when I ran it here it was quite well-received. You can judge what is at stake from post #238 in the PbP version. The PC Corporal Naiooka was shot with a critical success in the middle of the chest: this burned a hole in his clothes but didn't wound him. The PCs were not seriously threatened in that scene, though perhaps if they stuffed up very badly they might have got mobbed or thrown off a high place. The challenge in that scene was to obtain evidence out of a locker in the changing-room without massacring a lot of jerks. It wasn't the PCs who were at stake, but the lives of the NPC rioters. As far as I can tell that adventure works well and that scene is very effective.

Originally Posted by Kromm

Frankly, I don't think that script immunity has much of a place in RPGs. What's the point of investing hours of your time in a foregone conclusion?

A conclusion is not entirely foregone just because one subset of possible outcomes is off the table. For example, whswhs tells a story about a horror campaign in which the players were invited to nominate the limits of their tolerance of being horrified. Whswhs drew the line at injury to the eyes. Script immunity to injury to the eyes did not make the outcome of that campaign a foregone conclusion, nor, I understand, was the campaign unsuccessful. The same is true when death or even lasting injury to the PCs is not done: the range of outcomes is restricted, but not restricted to uniqueness.

Now, script immunity can be overdone. I have overdone it, as I have described. But I believe that (acknowledged or not) it has a large place in many groups' role-playing, and I would be reluctant to tell them that they are doing it wrongly. After all:

... between there and script immunity is a whole range of gaming experiences. That's what keeps the hobby interesting!

[Phaelen Bleux]

Originally Posted by downer

I sure see where you guys are coming from. I just hate it more when I invest time and effort in a game and then it all comes down to a bunch of bad or good die rolls. Sure, it's kinda fair, and uncertainty is a good thing, to a point. The rules sure have their part in spicing up the game, and I don't like to bend them, but if it helps the story along, I think it best. I've simply too often seen a game close down on bad terms, because the GM (myself included) simply shrugged and let the dice fall. Players discarded characters they liked, because the dice killed them or changed them in ways they never wanted them to. Good campaigns were no longer played, or no longer as much fun.

But what's the story?? And why would a good or bad die roll ruin the story??

Or, to put it another way, are you asking the players to have an "unpredestined" outcome (at least in theory) while you as GM want to see the storyline you've devised come to fruition?

I allow nearly all die rolls to stand. . .even when they mess with the story. . .especially when they mess with the story. It:

(1.) Shows the players that nothing is certain. . .even for the GM. I have had major bad guys kill themselves in front of the party by rolling spell critical failure with a fireball in their hex. It creates tension over the long haul and excitement at the acutely unexpected.

(2.) Forces me as a GM to be creative and spontaneous. Bad and good die rolls have completely redirected campaigns. Adapting to that is what I would consider good GMing.

(3.) And those moments of completely random "OMG I rolled a crit" (or even a regular success or failure that was unexpected) are the moments that my group talks about 3 years later. Not: "Hey, remember when I almost died but then things went along as planned."

[whswhs]

On a different track, let me write about my single biggest success in creating tension. This was a few years back, when I was running Under the Shadow, a campaign set in an alternate Middle-Earth where Sauron had spotted Frodo just after he crossed through Cirith Ungol into Mordor, grabbed the One Ring, and conquered Gondor, Rohan, Isengard, the Grey Havens, the Shire, and Rivendell. The campaign motto was "Sauron won. Welcome to the Resistance."

Midway through the first year, about half the PCs (each player had two characters, intentionally allowing for continued narrative investment after character deaths), accompanied by a nearly mad Elrond, set out to find Galadriel. Along the Anduin they met mixed parties of elves, men, and dwarves and were taken to meet with Galadriel—in Dol Guldur, which they had taken over.

Now, my reading of the situation was that Gandalf, the most powerful of the wearers of the Three, had used the power of Narya to fight Sauron's forces until he burned up. Elrond, the weakest, had been enslaved by Vilya until it was cut from his hand by the PCs. But Galadriel was balanced, as the saying goes, on the edge of a knife: She was able to command Nenya, and use the heightened power it gave her to battle Sauron, but only at the cost of incessant vigilance, so she hadn't slept in weeks and was feeling a growing will to mastery, making her more like she had been in the First Age, or even like Feanor.

So I recruited one of the players in a different campaign to play her as a guest star. This is a woman who has a better tactical sense than I have, and who loves campaigns with actions, conflicts, and stratagems. I encouraged her to play Galadriel as forceful, secretive, and clinging to sanity by her fingernails—but all in hints, not theatrics. I allowed her to know things about the PCs that Galadriel's telepathy would have picked up, and she composed secret telepathic messages for all of them. More generally, she was NOT under my control; I encouraged her to improvise and to make the players doubt which side she was really on, or whether she might really have chosen to be a Queen this time.

So here are her messages to the PCs:

You were a slave in Mordor, and more than a slave. What else are you to Mordor, I wonder?

You have the ferocity of a wild beast within your breast. It can serve you well but it could serve another's cause also. Beware lest it overwhelm you.

You are lost, but the truth lies within you. What else have you lost that might never be regained?

Long has it been since I heard your sweet music. Who commands your voice now?

I don't have the words of her message to the party leader, a mortal woman who had fallen in love with Glorfindel, except that they ended with, "That way lie only tears."

The whole thing worked brilliantly. You could see the players on the edge of their seats as they dealt with Galadriel.

Bill Stoddard