Power in Peril

This is probably an ill-advised post, but it’s created such an interesting emergence that I’ve got to talk about it.

While I’ve put Wanders of Dhim on hiatus, I’ve had a side project called Ballad of the Blasted Lands which features, among other characters, Nilin Nentri, our test-bed for chivare in specific and sorcery more generally. Now, that particular player is amenable to my fascination with damsels-in-distress and is willing to humor me when terrible things happen to her character. Because such distress can be disempowering and not especially fun, I offered her a trait as both a way to compensate for all her trouble, and to promise her none of this would ever happen without a reason, I gave her a trait: Power in Peril worth 5 points.

Power in Peril is one of those highly specific impulse buy point options. The idea here is whenever she is in distress, typically captured, bound, enslaved, or caught in some perilous trap, she had one impulse buy point she could always spend, once per session, related to that peril. She could use it to succeed at rolls to escape, the “I’m not having any more fun with this” option, or she could use it to succeed at some roll regarding her peril or to make a scene edit that makes her peril more important and impactful. Examples could be getting the villain to spill more than expected, or that when she inevitably escapes there’s some cool swag, or she’ll force a success at an influence roll to persuade someone to her side, etc.

This trait has completely rewritten how Ballad of the Blasted Lands plays in ways that are fantastic and solve so many problems that I often see in games that I feel like it needs to be laid out so everyone understands what it’s doing and what it says about games.

The Importance of Peril

Interrogation professionals don’t ask questions directly. They hide what they know and don’t know. Amateurs tend to ask for exactly what they want. It’s like playing poker with your cards showing.

Burn Notice, Questions and Answers

One of the trickiest narrative moments for a game-master is the villain reveal. In a normal narrative, we can show the villain in scenes that do not feature the heroes, or the villain can show up at a dinner or during a fight and the heroes simply won’t attack because the narrative calls for them not to. Player characters have agency that narrative characters do not, and so when the villain shows up to monologue, players may well toss and axe at his head and get a critical success (true story!). We could have said battle, but that risks the villain winning and killing the player characters, or the villain losing, and being killed. How then can we reveal the villain and his/her agenda?

There are several ways, but some GMs will try capture. It’s common enough in adventure fiction! Adam West’s Batman can’t go an episode without ending up in a death trap! This is a great trick, because the captured PCs can get the monologue, meet various NPCs, be impressed by the danger and power of the villain and then have a dramatic escape. The problem is most players would rather die than be captured. In many players’ minds, defeat and death are the same, and it’s not surprising why they see it that way: players often kill those they defeat and see no reason why the villain wouldn’t do the same. It’s sensible, after all. Furthermore, players often play for escapist fantasy, and defeat is not part of that escapist fantasy.

Performing this requires earning the trust of your players and assuring them that you won’t arbitrarily kill them off if they are defeated. This is critical because some GMs definitely will, and some genres will definitely encourage that sort of thing. This is not necessarily wrong, and I’m not saying those GMs are bad. I’m saying you need some way to signal to the players that defeat and capture is not the end of their characters to make them more willing to surrender, and you have to do this without disrupting the sense of realism too much.

This is what Power in Peril does. Because Nilin has this special trait, she knows that as soon as someone slaps cuffs on her, she’s either near assured of escaping at some point, or she’s going to get something good and useful. Yes, the bad guy’s going to laugh and monologue at her and she’ll be humiliated a little, but she’ll get a chance to turn the tables on him later. The trait guarantees that.

The Terror of Nilin Nentri

Nilin gets captured a lot. It’s not just me rubbing my hands and cackling, it’s also that her dice conspire against her; it’s like they know. I’ve never seen a player crit fail so much when trying to avoid capture. But despite her annoyance, she doesn’t mind. She’s even gone out of her way to surrender to people knowing what she can do once she’s behind enemy lines.

And man, does she do things behind enemy lines.

Nilin has negotiated alliances with enemies. She has stolen relics right out from under them. She has stolen their spells with relics of her own. She has uncovered draconic conspiracies, and talked an its-complicated love interest back from the dangerous ledge of a very bad decision. She’s gained a reputation for a whirlwind of chaos once she’s in enemy hands.

The net result is that far from feeling disempowered, Nilin comes across as quite cunning and dangerous, someone her enemies need to be very cautious of her. Meanwhile, I’m able to reveal all sorts of enemies and the inner workings of various NPC organizations through her experiences to the rest of the players. It’s win win!

Not For Everyone

Now, I want to caution you before you rush off to include this trait in your own games. Nilin is more than just this Power in Peril trait. I built Nilin for the player, and I designed her to take advantage of going behind enemy lines. She has a variety of “rogue” skills, like filch, escape, lockpicking, stealth, observation and search so once she’s captured, she can usually free herself, eavesdrop, steal interesting things and then slip away. Nilin also comes with lots of reasons to not kill her. She’s Beautiful and has influence skills that let her bat her eyelashes and persuade people they could find other uses for her. And for those disinterested in her beauty, she’s an accomplished and useful sorceress who can use her sorcery to help characters, so they often want her help in healing others or protecting them. Finally, she’s managed to build up a collection of friends that would happily ransom her, so her context makes her difficult to kill.

This would be a useful trait on any “roguish” character, someone who is willing to use cunning and “reverse interrogations” to get the knowledge they need, and then escape afterwords. It doesn’t have to be a “damsel-in-distress” trait, though it can also be that. It’s a useful spy trick in general. Keeping this trait to just those sorts of characters emphasizes how special they are at this particular things.

I wouldn’t give this trait to everyone, or make it a general campaign switch. As noted above, you really want a bunch of skills to cash in on a capture, rather than passively sitting around to be rescued. It’s also not appropriate to certain character concepts. Some proud, honorable warriors would rather die than be captured; that makes total sense for them, and so saying “Don’t worry, just let yourself be captured” is inappropriate.

Finally, some players dig defeat more than others. Nilin’s player is fine with capture, but I’ve had some players that crave the drama of capture, the sort of player who sees a “tall, dark and dangerous villain” and then start pestering me to have them kidnap their character. They often want to explore the tragedy of defeat or the Having an optional buy in for peril is a clear way for a player to signal their interest in this sort of game, and players who don’t buy it can signal their disinterest in this sort of gameplay.

I think in general offering a trait like this signals to players your interest in having non-lethal capture as part of your game, or in allowing characters to enter, endure, and then escape perilous circumstances, not just as the normal course of possibilities of failed rolls, but also as an interesting possible tactic that risky players might want to explore. I’m not certain its for all games, but it’s really been quite a remarkable experience in Ballad.