High Stakes Bluff
I love how the Good Fairy is all like, “Ma’am? Are you sure this is your daughter? Also, what’s with the throat knife? You mortals sure have silly traditions.”
Anywho, today’s comic may mention the wish spell, but that’s really just the ultimate form of that far-more-important concept: treasure. If you’ve ever salivated at the thought of a shiny new suit of mithral armor or coveted that fully tricked out Schmillenium Schmalcon in your sci-fi game, then you’ve experienced the siren call of gamer greed. You’ll try any crazy plan and risk any death-defying stunt to get the goods, and for me that’s one of the great pleasures of gaming.
Any of you guys ever here of a dead Frenchman named Roger Caillois? He wrote an influential book on the nature of play and games back in the ’60s, and he coined a number of useful terms in the process. You can hit that Wikipedia link for the full theoretical run-down, but the one I’m talking about today is alea. For the sake of this conversation, the handy-dandy definition from this amazing document will suit our needs just fine:
ALEA is the gambler’s thrill – the fun of taking a big risk, the tension that comes with it, win or lose. Games with dice rolls, and especially ones where big stakes are riding on that one throw of the dice, are good at giving alea.
For me, gambling is about two big emotions: greed and fear. There has to be desire, and there has to be risk. When money is on the line you’ve got a universal source for both. The downside of course is that you’ll likely lose the deed to your guildhall and wind up wandering the streets of Waterdeep looking for spare copper pieces in the gutter. If your character’s success is on the line though, if you’re staking your precious fictional alter ego on the outcome of a desperate gambit, then you get that same sense of “holy crap, everything rides on this one roll of the dice.”
So how about it, kids? Have you ever held your breath as the die clacked across the table, hoping against hope that you would successfully con the Good Fairy out of a free wish? What was the big gamble in your game? Did you come away a winner?
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I dunno, I’ve been reading a lot of wuxia light novels lately, and a large majority of the protagonists jump on every opportunity to claim ‘lucky chances’ so that they don’t fall behind the Hero Power Curve.
With a DM at the reins, there’s not really a worry that you’ll get so behind in levels and items that you’ll ‘lose’ (like you totally can in X-Com, for instance), but if you’re going to play a Main Character, you owe it to yourself and your friends to write as exciting of a tale as you can, and that means trying to sneak goblets out of Smaug’s hoard and ten-thousand-year lightning bamboo out of the local flood dragon’s cave. Maybe it doesn’t turn out so hot, but for purposes of memorability, you -always- win when you try to do stuff like that.
And then we have the opposite, which takes a different character and player type. They slowly, quietly accrue small advantages, bit by bit, step by step, carefully and cautiously. And then one day you get into a huge scrape and this unassuming player calmly declares that he has fifteen Colossal Sianghams, all with Extended Shrink Item, and he got a 15th caster level scroll of Telekinesis from the old man a month and a half ago in exchange for services rendered that no one remembered until today. On his turn, he hands both to the wizard and says “Have fun with all the D6s.”
So it’s not about “you can’t win if you don’t play.” It’s more of a “the only way to lose is not to play.” It’s a good point. If you stop equating “character success” to “player success,” it’s a lot easier to find fun in the game. Of course, it’s tough to have fun when you’ve been eaten by Smaug, but it’s a good point nonetheless.
Naw it’s easy. Just carry as many vials of poison as you can. You’ll die know Smaug failed a few of those DCs and at best the next time he sees adventurers he’ll remember, his bowels will clench up, and he’ll think about deal with his problems a different way. =P
I’m still scarred from the session where our party stumbled upon a Deck of Many Things. Some of the naive members of our party decided to draw a ridiculous number of cards. Overall, we were extremely fortunate and walked away with something like 10 Wishes, but all but three were consumed in undoing the horrible consequences we suffered.
Sadly one member of our party was imprisoned in a way that was not reversible with a Wish, and we never found her. Oh and our paladin had an alignment change and robbed us blind that night when he left the party. He ended up being a recurring villain throughout the rest of the campaign.
Now see, you guys should have heeded the Handbook’s advice:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/deck-of-too-many-things
I’m not sure if this is common or not, but the DMs I’ve played with and I tend to not include those “make it or break it” dice rolls. Probably because of the Deck of Many Things lose-lose scenario: if the players get really unlucky, they get messes up hard, and it feels dumb, unfun, and often unfair. On the other hand, if the players get lucky, and it nets them some amazing boon, the intended challenges are trivialized, so the DM has to crank up the Encounter Level.
Personally, I prefer the Metroid-vania approach: give the players things that gives them a slight advantage and changes the playstyle, but doesn’t break it. E.g. Party helped an air elemental and it gives the barbarian the axe “North Wind”, which makes a frost burst around its wielder when he flies into a rage. The barbarian will now probably wait until he reaches the front lines, to catch as many enemies as he can in the explosion, but it doesn’t drastically change the way that character (or the encounters) plays.
Gradual powerups feel better because it feels like the characters worked for it. It’s not arbitrary or for the plot. “Oh look, Krillin died. Time to conveniently reach powers of Saiyan legends…because friendship…”
Sorry if that came out a bit ranty. A Hearthstone binge can make most people get fed up with random power spike. Just wanted to say that the “payoff” feels better than the “lucky break” for most people I’ve played D&D with.
Naw man, you’re good. I think you’re describing a form of “KAIROSIS” though. Here’s the definition from that document I linked in the post:
“KAIROSIS is the feeling that of fulfillment that comes when an arc of fictional development completes – a character is tested and changes, a situation grows more complex, and is then resolved, and so on. Actively seeking kairosis often means authoring, though it may only be authoring certain details relevant to you (revealing yourself from stunt-level disguise in Spirit Of The Century, picking out character developments from Fallout in Dogs in the Vineyard). If you find yourself saying ‘that was a good ending to that bit’, you’re probably experiencing Kairosis.”
It is a different but no less valid form of “fun in RPGs.” I’m not sure it’s in direct opposition to ALEA, but I do think the two make for an interesting contrast.
I’m double-commenting here because I just remembered that the 3 man group that I was in chanced upon that very page and discussed it for a day, eventually picking our top three, which the DM took note of. Mine were Fiero, Kairosis, and Ludus, approximately in that order. I recommend that other folks chime in!
When I mentioned that page to my professor, he turned me on to “Man, Play, and Games” by Cailois:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man,_Play_and_Games
Dry stuff, but still important for RP. Especially the bits on mimicry.
Fiero, Humour, and Kairosis for me.