Action, Theatrix, and overwhelming odds…

I just finished watching Blade II. Watching the action, and especially the scenes in the drainage tunnels where Blade's outnumbered thirty or forty to one, has got me thinking a lot about some of the things I've written about here recently.

Let's recap real quick:

9 I roleplay to be part of a story like what I read in books or see in movies. 9 I want my roleplaying combat to work like an action movie: fast and maybe even breathtakingly so. 9 I'm finding that rules get in the way of the second point and often can detract from the first. 9 Freeform (but diced) combat seems like it's going to work for me once I get the hang of it.

Now let's pull in the earlier discussion of the Theatrix combat examples that one of its authors did. Huh… I thought I blogged about this extensively, but I can't find a trace of it on LJ or in my archives. I keep a backup copy of everything I post. And I can't find where I talked about it on any other forum.

Anyway, In both cases, he threw overwhelming odds against the PC… trapped in a hotel room with six Uzi-armed men trying to gun him down, or on top of a train about to go toe-to-to with someone superior to him in hand-to-hand, while a helicopter gunman tries to get a bead on him and goons below are climbing up to assist the first goon.

In both cases, he throws the PC into overwhelming odds and essentially tells the player to sink or swim. I discussed this a lot with Karen (which is maybe why I think I blogged about it), and this just isn't the kind of thing we normally see in a roleplaying game. But like in Blade II, it's something we see in movies all the time. The hero is constantly faced with overwhelming odds and finds some way to survive the ordeal.

If this is the way movies work, and many of us want our games to more or less work like a movie, why don't we see these "overwhelming odds" in our roleplaying games? I have a bit of a theory…

RPG combat is generally built around the idea of "balance." The entire game system is usually built around this concept. And the idea seems to be that you only throw the heroes into situations to which they are equal. Balance the heroes against equal opposition, more or less. If the opposition is a little stronger, the heroes usually has some kind of "hero points" that give them an edge, or the GM just fudges things to keep things balanced the way he wants them. Or more likely, the way the players want them.

My gut feeling is that players, through their characters, prefer to be in control of the situation. Looking at the "hotel room" Theatrix demo, the player was constantly struggling to put his character in control of the situation… which is quite reasonable, because that's obviously what his character wanted. But it's interesting that that "lack of control" feeling translates directly to the player. The player wanted to give up at several points… he was convinced that he couldn't win without GM fiat. The GM insisted that if he won, it would be because of his own efforts. (That's arguable… in a diceless game, everything that happens is controllable by the GM. If you win by creativity, it's because the GM decided you were creative enough.)

When faced with this lack of control, players don't have to think in real-time the way their characters do… they can analyze the situation, look for the best opportunity. This can be good, but it can lead to paralysis. It happened in the demo… the player said something to the effect of, "I can't win," and didn't declare an action… he was uncomfortable and was ready to quit. The GM pushed him to keep going… and the scene carried on for quite some time after that.

I think the basic fact that not having control of the situation pushes players out of their comfort zones. Is the whole point of having rules to keep everyone in their comfort zones? In a way, I think it is. For certain things, that's a good thing. But maybe we carry it too far. Maybe we miss out on making our games what we want them to be because learning how to do what we want to do is uncomfortable. (This is certainly true of my learning to play with very few rules.)

So let's say we want to create scenes like in Blade II and the "hotel room". What conscious steps can we take toward this end?

9 If the rules are getting in the way, modify or ditch enough rules that they stop getting in the way. I've started down this road. 9 Recognize and agree that what we want to achieve won't be achieved by cautious play, GM versus player mentalities, or "balanced" encounters. 9 Recognize that this process may be uncomfortable at first, but should become comfortable as we adapt to this style of play. Accept that we'll all make mistakes and learn from them. 9 The GM will not "punish" players for bad snap-decisions, and the players will be tolerant of the GM and each other as well. 9 Agree to play for the common enjoyment, not just our own.

Is there something I'm missing? Maybe your games already work this way. Leave a comment and tell us your thoughts on the matter.