Shrapnel Games Blog

Warning! I’m leading this post off with a PnP RPG war story.

When I create a campaign for a tabletop RPG I often like to base it around a central theme. Sometimes these can be broad, such as the ramifications of a magical trade war, to more precise content like how a special magical artifact affects the world around it. One campaign I ran was based on the old question of the morality of going back in time and killing an infant who would grow up to become evil incarnate (ya know, Hitler, Bundy, Thompson).

The campaign began with the PCs at first level. None knew each other and all were involved in their separate adventuring lives at the time. This soon changed as a older noblewoman became entangled in each of their lives, drawing them into forming an adventuring party by her need of one.

See, she had told each of the PCs that many years ago she had been queen of a small kingdom to the east. She ruled fair and just with her husband with their two beautiful children at their side. The lands were content, the commoners happy, and everything was perfect.

A neighboring kingdom though had a desire to expand and the only place it could would be into her kingdom. Her husband attempted to negotiate a reasonable solution to the military overtures that were occurring, but to no avail. The kingdoms went to war and her kingdom fell to the invaders. Towns were razed, cities were sacked, and her husband and children publicly slaughtered. She managed to flee and spent the next two decades formulating a plan to right what had happened.

While no natural practitioner of ven’kai (the term for magic in my campaign) she began to travel the lands learning the arts from whomever she could: hedge wizards with their cantrips, harlots with their alchemy, the fallen who had pledged their souls to worlds beyond. She dabbled in the basics before settling into one particular area: chronomancy. Killing her enemies today may provide some satisfaction but it would not bring her family back. No, she would have to go back in time to do so.

Realizing that while she could attain quite a level of proficiency in mastering this one particular area of ven’kai she would be weak in so many other areas the idea was hatched to form an adventuring group to make up for her weaknesses. She would find a blade to strike down her foes, a priest to heal her wounds, a rogue to open up the barred paths. Enter the party.

Now while she did tell the party about her lands being ravaged and her family being slain, she did not mention that she was a chronomancer. Rather, she told them she was versed in the art of teleportation. She also told them that her need for the party was to help her acquire a special “gem”—one that would be found in her enemy’s stronghold—to make matters right.

The PCs asked some questions, got the right answers, and accepted everything she said at face value. And for the most part, what she said was all true. Her lies were not brash ones, but lies of omission. After several adventures on the road together (in terms of game time a few months, in terms of real world time several weeks) the party “teleported” to her enemy’s kingdom.

The teleportation was off though, and instead of bringing them near the stronghold it placed them far away, almost at the land’s border. Over the course of travel to the stronghold and the city surrounding it the PCs discovered what had really happened.

Normally they had traveled cross-country, shunning others at the request of the noblewoman, but one night at her request they stopped at a small town. She needed to contact someone and the PCs were under strict orders not to mingle. Her fear was that being from far away (both in time and space) there was a possibility some of their behavior could make someone curious.
The PCs grew bored and made their way to a nearby tavern. When paying for their drinks they were accused of forgery and being complete idiots. After all, what kind of criminal tries to pass off fake coins with a minting date decades after the current year?

When confronted she played it off. Yes, they went back in time but nothing else had changed. The mission was still to get into the stronghold and to the special gem. She explained the need for traveling in time as simply a way to avoid what had happened to her kingdom. The PCs accepted her word, although one character began to have doubts about the entire affair. Still, now stuck back in time there wasn’t a whole lot to do but go with the flow.

Over the next few months (in real life) the party makes their way across the land, having many an adventure, until finally reaching their target destination which just so happened to be having a week long holiday festival (which of course meant lots and lots of strangers in town). Much plotting and scheming occurred at this point in an attempt to sneak into the stronghold, and in the process one unfortunate castle servant lost his life to a somewhat overzealous rogue. “I just meant to knock him out!” Hitting zero level characters just isn’t the same thing as hitting a tenth level paladin, ya know?

At the height of the festivities, with the royal family and the city watching a monstrous fireworks display over the river while barges carrying an entire orchestra played in time to the display, the party made their ingress into the castle. Up one level, then another and another, the party managed to make their way through the belly of the beast without spilling a drop of blood. At a golden door inlaid with ivory the noblewoman stopped them, smiled, and announced they were here. She entered.

Instead of a royal vault the party found themselves in a nursery. It just didn’t seem like the place an evil king would keep some sort of powerful gem. The noblewoman made her way to a bassinet while drawing a dagger.

At this point the PCs began to realize that something wasn’t quite right. Power crackled from their fingertips, crossbows were leveled, swords drawn, and the question, “Okay lady, exactly what do you think you’re doing?” rang out.

She came clean. The special “gem” was the infant before her; after all, it was surely a gem in his mother’s eyes. The king outside celebrating? That wasn’t the king that would lead to the destruction of her family and realm. He was the father of the one who would do so. The baby before her was the culprit and she intended to stop his reign before it could ever happen.

The party had began as individuals and over the course of months became a group. Their characters had grown together, and with her. They had adventured together, broke bread, fought and bled together. And now they were in a Mexican standoff.

The kid would grow up to be evil, right? Should they let her kill him? But if they were caught how would they be treated? Would the law be able to see what she knew? And what about her? She was always above board with them but then again she did lie about exactly where/when they were going to…what else could she have lied about?

Tension was thick both in the room and in the game. Questions and emotions swirled. There were no easy answers, no quick fixes. But something had to be decided, and decided quick. A group of heavily armed strangers who had infiltrated into the castle and were now standing over the prince with weapons drawn would probably not get much of a chance to explain.

And then they made their move…

That single event which had been building up for months was a thing of beauty. Everyone was involved, everyone was at the edge of their seat. Discussions of right and wrong, of the nature of human goodness and evil, of truths, half-truths, and outright damn lies, flew across the game table.

That day was a good day for gaming.

I remembered that particular campaign because recently it seems like a lot of folks are praising the “moral” choices found in today’s digital games, such as Bioshock or GTA IV. Yet to me I have yet to see true examples of forcing the player to think about the consequences of their actions.

Part of the problem is that these grey decisions you have to make really aren’t that grey. In Bioshock the saving/killing of Little Sisters boiled down to which game mechanic you wanted to use to reap plasmids. The bigger problem though is that the player has very little investment in their character, and the characters they are impacting.

If everything I told you about in the campaign happened in the first session they would have been no impact. No one had a chance to get to know who their character was, nor who the others were. No time to grow, no time to learn. Personalities would have been replaced by statistics, risk and reward by “Hmm, how long would it take to roll up a new character if we get killed by the king’s watch?”

Until digital gaming allows players to meaningfully grow their characters a video game will never be able to truly force players to delve into shades of grey. At the moment we are subjected to being told in a game how our characters should react, with absolutely no chance to impact the world around us. Even genres that would seem to be logical places for such behavior, like a CRPG, are often nothing more than examples of exposition and not introspection.

It’s simply not enough to be presented with a “ooh, is this right or wrong?” situation if the context surrounding it is without true substance. Designers need to make the journey to that question as powerful as the question itself. So far, I haven’t seen that.