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3 Joykill Mechanics

27/3/2017

10 Comments

 
Picture
“Your sword is gone.”
“WHAT?!?! What do you mean??”
“It doesn’t exist anymore. You have no sword.”
“But that was my +5 family heirloom sword! It cost me 50,000 GP and we spent four months in real time on a side quest to get it!!”
“...and you put it in an annihilation portal trap. Tough.”
“Don’t I get a saving throw?!? Or something??”

WARNING! All of the mechanics I mention below are risky. This does not mean any of them are forbidden, nor even bad. Some of them are actually quite common. They are risky in the sense that they threaten to take the fun out of the game for some players. I wrote an article about some rewards that role-playing gamers want to get from their games, then another about some of the games that do a good job of providing these rewards. Now it’s time to talk about the games that will ruin your fun by taking these rewards away.

Taking away or delaying game rewards means consequences for in-game actions start to affect the player as well as their character. Players often invest a lot of time and effort to get their characters to a particular stage, and these mechanics tend to negate that time and effort. To be fair, there is definitely an appropriate time to have your heirloom sword permanently removed, or for your character to die. Gamemasters and players often want to play a high-stakes game. Before you decide to apply a mechanic that could potentially undo or complicate the real-life work that players have put into the game you should talk about the risks, and decide as a group if having high-tension drama is worth suffering player-affecting consequences.

I mention three joykill mechanics, but there are certainly more pit traps out there. If you think of any that I should have targeted, write them in the comments! I picked these three because they are typical of the worst reward-removing mechanics. Here is the list.

1. Bad Karma - TSR Marvel Super Heroes
I’m really looking forward to playing Cyclops and being able to shoot around corners. Now, if I get karma every session and only spend half of it on having good rolls and don’t accidentally kill anyone or do anything out of character, I should be able to earn that stunt in…. oh, about two years of play time.

The Marvel Super Heroes character advancement mechanic is a joykill. Which is a shame because I love the game! Character development is handled with Karma - save someone, beat the bad guy, or just do something awesome, and you receive Karma. Karma can be used to buy power stunts - cool things that your character can do with his/her powers. Brilliant!

There are two problems with the Karma mechanic, though. The first is that Karma can also be used to buy successes in-game: to karate chop Magneto’s face or narrowly miss being mesmerized by Mysterio, spend Karma. This drains the resource that you would normally use for character advancement.

The second problem;  to successfully gain a power stunt, you need to succeed several times at different success levels; really cool, in theory. Unfortunately, in practice, it means that unless you have a prohibitive amount of Karma stored up in case you fail a roll, you could end up having wasted your Karma and starting back at square one.

It’s important to separate character development resources (like Experience Points) and burnable assets in your game, because otherwise players risk burning up their hard work just so they don’t lose their character.

2. Dungeoneering Drain - Dungeons and Dragons
“The vampire succeeds on a touch attack. You lose two levels.”
“Noooo! I just got to level twelve! I really wanted to cast sixth-level spells!”
“While you’re standing there, lamenting your fate, the vampire touches you again.”
“Nooooooo!”

There are more than three joykills in the grandaddy of all role-playing games (see the opening vignette about a 2nd edition AD&D scenario), though many of them have been ironed out in subsequent editions. Some of them persist. Try not to use them without warning the players.

Rust Monsters: Given that new gear is one of the rewards that players who like Dungeons and Dragons crave, creating a monster whose sole purpose is to eat gear is risky. Whether gear is bought, found, or quested for, a rust monster can easily remove an irreplaceable reward from play.

Experience Points for Effects: Just like with the bad Karma above, there are some mechanics in Dungeons and Dragons that require a player to spend the points they would normally use for character development to achieve certain effects (usually magical ones). This is done to maintain game balance; the effects that are bought with experience points are usually quite powerful. This is risky, though, because having a mage at 10th level when everyone else is at 12th can get tedious; character advancement is as rewarding as new gear, if not more.

Level Drain: THE WORST!! Again, in a high-stakes game, level-draining creatures (often powerful undead) are specifically designed to hit the player where it hurts the most - in the experience points! Don’t pit yourselves against a vampire unless everyone is on board with the fact that they might lose a couple of levels before it’s all said and done… as if levels were the worst thing to lose. Which brings me to my next point:

3. The Ultimate Joykill - Character Death
“I’m going to run across the rickety bridge that spans the chasm.”
“Okay, roll for it.”
“Natural one.”
“Oh. Ouch. Um, make a reflex save.”
“Uh… also one.”
“Oh. Uh, I guess you fall screaming to your death.”
“On the first day?”

Something that is nearly invisible because it is assumed in most games, character death is a joykill mechanic. I may be opening myself to criticism, but I think allowing character death to be determined by the random rolling of dice is risky, and leads to a million absurdities from a storytelling perspective. What happens when your character’s goal was to deliver information vital to the success of a world-saving mission, and they get taken out by a couple of bandits who happened to roll really well? No, thank you.

I applaud games like Mutants and Masterminds and Fate that deliberately remove character death from the mechanics. Characters can be ‘taken out:’ knocked out, captured, lost, or forgotten… but that just creates an interesting twist in the story. Fate takes it a step further, and allows players to decide when character death would be appropriate, thereby allowing the players and the GM, in conversation, to decide when to raise the stakes.

It is essential to have conversations about when you are going to use high-stakes mechanics. High-tension drama is vital to role-playing games, and these mechanics can provide that when appropriate. Bust them out at the wrong time, though, and you will kill the fun for the players in your group.

Landrew is a full-time educator, part-time art enthusiast. He applies his background in literature and fine arts to his favourite hobby (role-playing games) because the market for a background in the Fine Arts is very limited.  He writes this blog on company time under a pseudonym.  Long live the Corporation!


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10 Comments
Robert
27/3/2017 08:29:25 am

Mouseguard (using burninwheel) has an interesting death mechanic. You only risk death when you state killing as your objective. Discourages being a murder hobo simultaneously.

Reply
Landru
28/6/2017 03:52:17 pm

Cool trick. I'm sure it encourages creative problem-solving, too! Thanks for the comment.

Reply
Tony Shreck
27/3/2017 09:11:42 am

Great read!

I couldn't agree more about PC death. It just ruins the storytelling / developing aspects of the game that are central to the experience as I appreciate it. I spend a significant amount of time creating the campaign and my players work hard to develop their characters, and it's just brutal to randomly kill them off due to bad luck with the dice.

My way of handling it is to reduce most fatal events (recent example was a young paladin getting a poison dart trap to the neck on the first day of adventuring) to near fatal, force loss of treasure and time commensurate to the encumbrance of dragging one's fallen comrade back to the temple/town for recovery. When players tire of a character and want to move on to playing something/someone else we work together to lead them to a glorious or ignominious end.

Of course, the above applies best when the PCs are toward the good end of the alignment spectrum and prone to help each other out, as opposed to pillage the bodies of their fallen comrade, but the latter type of characters don't work very well in my game world.

Reply
Landru
28/6/2017 03:57:26 pm

oI agree. Evil characters (and even so-called 'neutral' ones) are all or nothing (either everyone is evil, or nobody is), and even then only for a short time.

Good strategy for handling near-death. I think I'll use it! Thanks for the comment.

Reply
Bankbar Como link
27/3/2017 10:10:52 am

#1) So true. I wrote a large review of TSR's Marvel on boardgamegeek and this is one of the aspects I criticized most harshly. However, it was very adequately defended by another user.

#3) With no risk outside of your control, there is no cause for tension. The concept of PC death was discussed at medium-length in the Brigade and across video responses on youtube. I believe the idea that PC death destroys story-telling was thoroughly debunked, except from--as Runeslinger would describe it--a story-first perspective. If you are gaming from a story-first perspective and you are playing a lethal system, there was a serious mistake in mixing the two of those. If you chose to play a lethal system, then you must be flexible enough to accept PC death.

If, as you described, the plot is on the world-ending scale, you should also be properly mixing your threats, PCs, *and* the GM's decision on when to call for a roll. If the plot is apocalypse-level, then it should be taken on by characters capable of handling such a task, who should be capable of handling a couple of random brigands, unless you are playing a lethal system in which we are right back to "did you choose the right system for the game you wanted to play?" Or alternatively you can just narrate the scene btwn the players and GM, not requiring any rolls to risk death on, but then I wonder what purpose the encounter even plays in the campaign/adventure?

Reply
Landru
28/6/2017 04:04:17 pm

Thanks for the comment! I admit that I come from a story-first bias, regardless of the mechanic. I would advocate for near-death situations, which typically create more interesting situations; though of course there are exceptions. I am also not totally against using character death; I just think that if your character dies on another character's side quest, the impact is disappointing, whereas dying pursuing his/her own quest is tragic. Very different emotional impact.

Reply
Morgan Shadowpines
27/3/2017 10:14:29 am

Low points reward in a point based system has always been a joykill to me, as well. I recall about a half dozen GURPS games I played where I never managed to buy anything costing more than maybe 5 or 10 points. The rewards came in too slow for it to be much fun, when your character -can't- develop in certain ways because it'd cost you 30 points, or a year real-time, in other words.

I do pull death punches to near-fatal, as a DM, because it can make for an awesome story. Say your player crossing a rickety bridge has it collapse under them. They get their crit-fail rolls. Off the top of my head, I might decide that during the death of the bridge the player finds an anchor rope wrapped around their leg, banged against the cliff face (or whatever) with 1d4-1 HP left. They might be able to climb back up it, or they might get hauled up by someone else. Or, maybe they hit their head and are KOed, waking up with partial amnesia. So many directions you can go..

Reply
Landru
28/6/2017 04:07:56 pm

Yes, low points is a bummer. Again, I like Fate because although big rewards take time, you can change some things every session. Thanks for the comment!

Reply
Mike Monaco link
27/3/2017 07:30:33 pm

1. I think the intent was to minimize character advancement as that's how comics usually are-- the story advances but the characters don't get more powerful, for the most part. Not sure if the game made it easier to increase low stats and weak powers but that would be sensible.
2. In DnD, I mostly see pcs get new stuff and discars the old stuff or sell it off so I don't think losing an item is a permanent setback. Ymmv.
3. I honestly can say that stories with characters dying are usually better than ones where no major character can die. The exception are kiddy stories, but most good juvenile fiction has character death too, at least if it's an adventure story.

Reply
Landru
28/6/2017 04:16:36 pm

Thanks for the comment! In MSH, the characters don't often get more powerful, but they can learn new stunts to perform with their powers. It's a really cool mechanic, but it takes so long to learn a new stunt that I would argue it fails to capture the spirit of the genre where characters use their powers to solve problems in creative ways in every issue.

I agree about character death being a powerful story tool. I admit that I'm a story-focused gamer. My beef is with accidental character death that is dramatically inappropriate. Characters should risk death when the stakes are high, otherwise, the character's story is an anticlimax.

Reply



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