Interview Arc: Investigator
Poor Benedict Cumberbird. He wanted so badly to flex those deductive muscles for the interview! An embarrassing showing for the Aarakocra Investigator to be sure. It’s important to remember that it could be worse though. With Assassin lurking about the candidate pool, our poultry PI is lucky to be alive! One shudders to think what might befall Oracle’s finalist candidate in Part 3 of this interview arc.
While the Anti-Party carry on with their hiring process, what say the rest of us depart the land of oubliettes and ouroboroi for a strange interlude less conventional genre? Earlier this week I finally got the chance to GM a Powered by the Apocalypse one-shot. For those of you unfamiliar with PbtA, the family of games is part of the “fiction first” style of RPG, cutting down on crunchy mechanics in favor of collaborative narrative. The focus on messy relationships and group (as opposed to GM-led) storytelling means that everyone helps to shoulder some of the world-building load. That turned out to be a good thing in my case, as I doubt I’d have come up with a proper Thirsty Sword Lesbians setting by my lonesome.
The setting is every bit as over-the-top as it sounds, with equal parts camp and angst. Our group settled on the book’s Sparkle Heart Magic Force Go! premise, a Sailor Moon-esque romp through friendship and glitter-based magical attacks. We modified the shit out of it though. Here’s the starting pitch from the book to give you an idea:
It’s been years since the Mystical Guardians of the Sparkle Heart received their call to arms. Seemingly ordinary college students transformed to battle the Eidolons, otherworldly monsters of eerie beauty and vicious intent. Thanks to the Mystical Guardians, the gate was sealed—just in time for finals! The PCs parted ways after graduation, and the Sparkle Heart became a distant memory. Years later, they’re going to have to remember their power and their friendship to confront a new threat.
My contribution was a “20 year reunion” premise, with the band getting back together on-campus in middle age. Things quickly spiraled away from my expectations however, as my players variously suggested a sci-fi setting, a college campus tethered to Earth by diamond space elevators, and replacing the conventional magical girl transformation with freaking mecha. All of this sounds like a great premise on paper, but the basic moves took me a long way from my D&D comfort zone.
You see, the game’s basic skill checks include things like “emotional support” and “finally kiss, in a dangerous situation.” That’s immediately evocative. Every geek in the room flashes on any and every shōjo product they’ve ever encountered. But when you swap the play loop of the dungeon (enter room > encounter hazard > overcome hazard) for the play loop of emotional engagement (encounter NPC > understand trauma > commiserate), figuring out how to stage that mess can be one hell of a paradigm shift.
As players, we are often told to remember options beyond combat. We’ve even done that comic ourselves. And like we said way back when, actually talking to the monster rather than stabbing it can be good policy, resulting in friendship rather than bloodshed. But as GMs, I think it’s equally important to prep sessions with a different set of assumptions in mind. Because I found myself unexpectedly flummoxed by, “How do you run an emotionally fraught college reunion?” And I think that a good storyteller ought to be able to engage more narratives than “kill the monster.”
So what do you say, GMs of Handbook-World? Have you ever found yourself running a romance / investigation / social session? How do you change your approach to session prep when you want to emphasize character relationships rather than murder? Tell us all about your own less-lethal campaigns and fiction-first gamer moments down in the comments!
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I tend to do roleplay-heavy campaigns in general, partly because I prefer RP to combat and partly because I know how players like to derail their way out of fights. In fact, in a one-shot I’ve got planned (a courtroom drama adventure inspired by the Ace Attorney games), the focus is almost entirely on exploration, investigation and character interactions, and there are no combat encounters that can’t be bypassed somehow. Most of my prep work goes into designing major characters, whether they be friend, foe or otherwise, and figuring out their motivations and secrets. I then let the PCs do what they do best.
On a related note, one trick I like to use with mystery plots is placing clues where the PCs look for them rather than in predetermined locations. For instance, when my PCs were investigating the murder of a queen by searching her bedchambers, I didn’t have any evidence of the killer established beforehand and just came up with something on the fly for everything they checked, whether it be the bed, the wardrobe, the air vents or something else. While they did have to make different skill checks to find or interpret evidence from different places, there was always a chance of finding something useful no matter where they searched.
I took the “design major characters” approach as well, figuring I could improv my way to success from there. When it comes to actually staging “encounters” however, my training failed me.
How do you move from scene to scene in this approach?
That’s a bit trickier. I’d say the key is to know what the PCs’ goals are and use those to keep them moving when needed. When things are going well, the players can pretty much drive the story themselves, and all you really have to do is give appropriate rewards for good decisions and consequences for poor ones. If the players are getting complacent or bored, throw in a complication that jeopardizes their goals, such as a new rival, an unexpected disaster, or one of the characters’ dark secrets coming to light. If they’re feeling lost or stuck, lead them to something that can help move them forward, such as a new ally or useful tools and information.
Wait, did Assassin Rogue murder Berserker Barbarian?
I find it funny that the anti-party has interviewed two Rogue subclasses in a row.
FYI, Investigator is its own class in Pathfinder.
Traumatised by the locked door, personally would just get high explosives or the universal key.
“emotional support skill check”… what in name of Tyr’s remaining hand is that and how is it even useful? Next you say that the campus sauna requires people to use towels.
Yes, to foil an assassination plot. Though they went more violent route than I was assuming, you’d think people would love to avoid combat in the high mortality Warhammer Fantasy.
…I genuinely don’t know how to parse this statement. Do you just not know what “emotional support” means, or can you not imagine a TRPG sufficiently detached from dungeon-crawling conventions that providing someone emotional support would matter? And what the fuck does the campus sauna have to do with anything??
Okay so the joke was bad, also he spoke of setting being in college campus so I decided to compare a relative absurdity with another.
I was thinking of going “Emotional support? you mean drinking?”
Besides most of I play with do it to get away from reality. Dealing with emotions isn’t one of those even if it’s handeled with a dice roll.
> “emotional support skill check”… what in name of Tyr’s remaining hand is that and how is it even useful?
Naw man, it’s a fair question. I remember looking at an academic design for a Jane Austen MMO a million years ago. Fights consisted of spamming your “gossip” attack until you defeated your opponent. That shit struck me as textbook ludonarrative dissonance.
In Thirsty Sword Lesbians, the “emotional support” skill is meant to mimic soap opera tropes.
“No one will ever understand me!”
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
*rolls emotional support*
“Success! You can clear your ‘hopeless’ condition.”
In game terms it’s a “healing” move. But the tough part is shifting your headspace into an RP genre where this sort of interaction comes up.
Check out page 8 if you’d like to see how the moves interact with one another:
https://www.evilhat.com/home/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Thirsty-Sword-Lesbians-TSL-Handouts.pdf
That is a beast of it’s own. Though if I were to pitch this to my current group that consent part on first page gets thrown out the window and they’ll turn it worth of P-hub, and I’ll go along with it as it’s probably more PG than either of the warhammer adventures currently ongoing.
also did you get the Judge Dredd tables?
Recently, I’ve been interviewing actual play podcasters for my academic work. The X-card came up in one of ’em, and the podcaster said it was used exactly once in their whole gaming career… and that was during recording! It’s not useful until it’s indispensable.
My own take is that “safety tools” are better when they’re introduced just as the group is formed. Once you’ve been playing together for a while, trust has already been established, and bringing in those tools can feel forced.
The what now?
I wish my gaming group was the kind who’d treat Thirsty Sword Lesbians as an intriguing new experience to try and not a joke that got taken way too far. I’d love to play or run something not mired in the dungeon-crawling/shadow-running conventions of 90’s TRPGs…but I suspect I’m the only one who’s interested in that sort of thing, which makes it hard to actually suggest anything. Especially something as divorced from ye olde conventions as TSL.
I wouldn’t have chosen it for myself, but some of my queer friends made the request. I really wanted to do right by them for a “my first RPG” experience, so I watched a couple episodes of Utena and skimmed through the rules. It’s been a fun change of pace so far. And I hope that part 2 of the “”””one-shot”””” will feel a little more fluid.
That said, I do have my issues with the fiction-first style of play. While it’s neat to see mechanics that directly support tropes, I find that they’re more effective at genre simulation than fluid roleplay. I like improvising character interaction, but stopping to consider which of your moves is appropriate tends to bog down dramatic scenes. It’s the same reason my Exalted group quietly shelved that system’s Social Combat rules.
As for breaking out of genre, there’s nothing that says you only get one gaming group. If your buddies are into power metal and van art fantasy rather than theatrical experiences, preferences are totally allowed. They might be sci-fi /fantasy fans first rather than RP fans. But it seems to me that separating roleplay from dragon stabbing opens up the experience to a broader swath of potential players. And that’s good news for you! Because if you really want to try out TSL, you might find that you have more recruitment options than you realize.
1. I’d argue that D&Derivatives, Shadowrun, etc are also more effective at genre simulation than fluid roleplay, just for a different genre and with different types of restrictions impeding roleplay. (Leaving aside how, say, D&D’s class system exists in part to assign characters fantasy tropes.) But I don’t actually want to get into an argument here.
I will say that I wish more RPGs would try a hybrid approach. Fiction-first and simulationist mechanics are opposed in one sense, but not in a way that prevents them from coexisting in the same game. Technically, mechanics like hero points, inspiration, and the Rule of Cool are fiction-first, and people like those rules well enough. I wish more people tried combining them.
2. The availability of gaming groups varies heavily based on where you are.
Aside from online games, but my experience with playing TRPGs online has been hit-or-miss with more misses than hits.
I quite liked the “bennies” over in Savage Worlds. Just enough of a meta-currency to give players some codified world-building power.
As for available gamers, Holly Pond, AL and Seattle, WA are very different places. A gaming group won’t magically appear just because you’re switching games. But if you want to do a little recruiting, something like TSL might cast a wider (or at least differently-shaped) net than D&D.
I run the campaigns I would like to run. Simple as.
The question was “how do you run a session that focuses on character relationships rather than combat?” It’s a particularly relevant question for me since I suddenly found myself wanting to run that style of game for the first time in a long time.
Without the safety net of complex combat mechanics to fall back on, setting up interesting conditions for a string of “social encounters” turned out to be harder than I expected.
The trick, I’d imagine, is to know what your players’ characters (and NPCs relevant to them) are like ahead of time. That sort of thing needs to be personalized much more extensively than a dungeon crawl.
I’m running an entirely invesigation-based game at the mo and it’s a totally different experience I’ll grant.
I have to be way more prepared, so there are actually clues that make sense and can be followed to get to the baddies in a consistent way.
As for encounter design, and character relationships, I’ve never been a ‘kick down the door’ style of GM anyway, things like HP pools tend to be an afterthought for my encounter building.
I tend to go for Motivation, Interests, Dislikes, and similar. The motivation is important, because it’s the main driving force. This con artist wants to lie their way out of trouble. That bring them into direct conflict with the police investigator PCs, who want to pin down who’s been fleecing all these people. they’re maybe hard to fluster, but easy to physically intimidate. I now have a full encounter, with a driving force, a win condition, and a few things that will tip the scales one way or another.
I honestly might have bit off more than I could chew with this one.
“Improvised session” is one thing. But toss “new system” and “relationship drama” onto the pile and a few character names wasn’t enough to make for interesting conflict.
I think I’ma give a character web a shot, with all those groovy Motivation, Interests, Dislikes attached to the strands. wish me luck!
Improv-ing a totally new system is … seldom a good idea/
Character web sounds a bit like what I do, so I hope it works!
I gotta say I really like Powered By The Apocalypse, I’m running Dungeon World at the mo and it’s grand. Flows much easier than DnD ever did for me, the fiction is king, no more combing through what feels like 1000 feats so my character can do this specific thing, and no more immersion breaking ‘roll initiative’!
I always compare game mechanics to language. English is a bitch to learn, but it’s a great poetry language. Esperanto is easy to learn, but doesn’t do poetry so good.
If you can surmount the learning curve and become fluent in their conventions, mechanically complex games are wildly expressive. All those fiddly mechanics become the tools of creativity. If you just want to communicate, though, a lighter system eases the way.
In either case though, picking up a contrasting style can always feel like a foreign language at first.
Well, how about that! I’m putting together a TSL game at the moment as well! I normally like having tight control over my stories, so the switch to a much more collaborative approach is doing me an anxiety. I definitely wouldn’t attempt it with players I didn’t know and trust.
My main worry for the game is that I might be overplanning. My usual approach, of planning out a series of social encounters as a sort of emotional dungeon crawl, may not pan out in this much more loose and fast-paced system. My backup plans, of secretly fleshing out a limited number of NPCs/improvising like hell, have me a little more confident – and if all else fails, I can just present a scenario and sit back to let the players flirt with each other. But it’s tough to plan when you can’t predict how your players will interface with the world they’re presented.
You’re a session in – what worked for you, and what didn’t work? What’s the best way to get your head around the system switch?
I’d have preferred to do character gen beforehand so that I had more time to prep. We did character creation at the table, then sat down to play. That didn’t give me much time to plot and plan and set up relationships. Happily, it also meant that the session ended after only a couple of hours of play. I’ve got another shot at getting it right.
I started a thread on r/RPG looking for advice myself. Some of it may be useful for you:
https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/th6850/how_do_you_change_your_approach_to_session_prep/
Good luck out there, and happy gaming.
PBTA takes work for the DM and distribute between the players. I would have thought you would like that 🙂
Also Laurel sorry to tell you this but you will be drawing Investigator for a good while 🙂
At least hope this one doesn’t end up joining the Silver Prince like the Inspector 😛
> PBTA takes work for the DM and distribute between the players. I would have thought you would like that
If you’re an experienced play group, this is true. The fiction-first approach is harder when you’ve also got to guide newer players. I find that a more structured approach is best when you’re taking your buddies through their first “what is this RP thing anyway” experience. YMMV of course.
Better luck next time, inspector Byrd.
I hope we get to see an (adorably badass) Ratfolk character for part three! Wonder what class they’ll be. Skald, Warpriest, Bloodrager, Shaman, Hunter and Arcanist are all viable.
I hope you were not too disappointed.
Is that dart tipped with a plunger, or is Investigator sporting a really big boo-boo from whatever was injected into him (her?)?
He has a giant bird welt.
Any chance of a Gazeteer with the full actual interviews? Or a transcript of the discussion from the Anti-Party as they consider who to pick?
That’s not a bad idea for Part 4.
My main experience of this kind of thing comes from playing Masks, another PbtA game, based on the young-supers genre. And my experience of that is that the GM doesn’t really need to do much to let the drama roll… the players will happily drive a lot of it, because the character creation process does a very good job of setting up good and bad relationships between the party members. The main role of the GM is to extend that beyond the party… the way they interact with authority figures, or with antagonists who’ll try to push all the emotional buttons, etc.
A few relationship highlights from one of those games…
* Two of them were in a relationship… reasonably straightforward on its own. We’re not really into RPing bedroom scenes, so this was mostly played out through general affection, and the odd argument about whatever came up.
* A third party member was the ex… ex-girlfriend, and ex-villain, who’d betrayed and tried to kill him a couple of years earlier. Let’s just say that there was some trust issues between the three of them, which played out both in some loud arguments and failed missions, and in some fairly touching scenes of reminiscing about past mistakes. The two girls ended up getting on fairly well after a while, after a few nighttime rooftop patrols with nothing to do but talk…
* The fourth character wasn’t part of that particular dispute, and so she was the one person who could work with any of the other three – or mediate between them. Her dramas were more external, due to being the daughter of some D-list villain.
> the character creation process does a very good job of setting up good and bad relationships between the party members
I literally put pairs of characters together inside of space elevators to start the session.
“It’s a two-hour ride up to the low-earth platform. You have time to talk.”
After the awkward silence, we skipped up to the reunion scene itself.
The relationship building and leading questions are great. But when you’re dealing with newer players, you’ve still got to set the scene a bit. Give them a situation to react to beyond their pre-fabricated relationships. That’s what I’m hoping to accomplish in Part 2.
Someone in my group recently acquired Thirsty Sword Lesbians, so we’re considering experimenting with it, but that’s a while in the future. We are, however, preparing to do something with the recently-Kickstarter-released Avatar: The Last Airbender RPG, which is a Powered By The Apocalypse system. It’s been interesting examining the rules and getting a feel for how the system expects to work. We’ve already kind of broken the rules by planning the campaign in a more D&D/Pathfinder way than the recommended “all the players get together and figure out what their pilot episode events were” method, but I’m sure that will be fine. On the plus side, none of the PCs like each other to begin with, so drama shalt be aplenty!
In terms of non-combaty games, I suffer from complexity addiction (that’s not quite true – I enjoy every minute of it), so my normal Pathfinder games have piles of factions and different NPCs screwing each other over to begin with. It’s not that big of a leap from that to a low-combat scenario. In fact, I’ve been running a PF2 three-probably-fourshot that has had ONE combat in ~17 hours of play (counting out-of-game messing around). And the players have loved it! Obviously, I was totally upfront that it was a mystery/roleplaying-focused adventure, so the players have been more than willing to keep up with the ~10 NPCs as mysterious things continue to happen.
It probably helps that I wrote Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney fangames for years before every becoming a DM (still do, in fact), so a character/mystery-focused story is second nature to me.
One of the HCI texts I like to teach in my Unity course is Brenda Laurel’s “Computers as Theatre.” Here’s the relevant quote:
I tend to think of PbtA when I hear “improvisations of the classroom variety.” We’re talking about theatresports here. Improv games. And though Laurel is obviously wrong about these being unsatisfying (plenty of people enjoy PbtA games), there is a real cost. That split attention means that you’ve got to flicker in and out of different styles of interacting.
I’m not part of your group, so this may be wildly inaccurate. But I read the retreat to a D&D style of planning as a preference for “just being players” rather than the pseudo co-GMs that PbtA needs.
We haven’t actually started playing yet, so the use of D&D planning is more of a GM thing (also because we started planning the scenario before we actually had the rulebook). I still think it’ll be fine, since most of the scenario is a contained sandbox where the GM knows locations and people but doesn’t have formal plot plans. If anything, I think it is less of a “the players just want to be players” thing as it is that the GM has never GM’d a thing before and isn’t confident in their improvisational abilities. Co-GM players might be the perfect fit of that, since they reduce the workload, but I can see how it’s also sort of a leap of faith where the GM might fear that they are incapable of tying the player improvisations together into a coherent story. But, again, we’ll have to test it in practice.
Now, I know that Investigator has been hit with a poison dart that’s causing their head to swell.
But my brain keeps looking at it and going “Nah, that’s one of those suction cup darts attached to their head.”
All complaints to the art department will be filed under “Colin doesn’t want to sleep on the couch.”
To me at least, there are two sections of games that I play. Serious systems and “beer and pretzels/casual systems.” I rank pbta next to 5e in the second category.
Which is absolutely not to say the latter cannot be serious or impactful. Just that the latter are more free flow.