As before, so again: this post contains a significant amount of what could fairly be called “criticism” of Matt Snyder’s Nine Worlds. I criticize because I love. I mean, I am still in this game and psyched about it months after we started, so I’m clearly having fun. It is somewhat sad that I tend to notice and consider what is not-as-fun more than I do what is fun, but it is what I do.
This post is about the unbalanced nature of adversity in the game. In Nine Worlds opposition comes from other characters, either other Archons (player characters) and their attendant stats or supporting characters (NPCs) with their own, roughly Archon-esque stats. The problem is that conflicts with supporting characters are, in some odd way, basically a form of GM fiat.
Yowch. Did I just say that much of Nine Worlds conflict resolution is GM fiat? That’s rough, but let me explain what I mean. When you get into a conflict it’s every man for himself. That is, if it is your PC vs. three NPC entities (note that a single NPC entity can by multiple minor characters) then, even if they are working together, you compare your Fate score to each of theirs separately. This is pretty cool, and allows for some really interesting free-wheeling multi-participant conflicts.
The problem is: there are no solid boundaries for generating the stats for these NPCs. There are a number of examples of NPCs in the book (which, by the way, are brilliantly done; each one is just focused enough for you to use as an inspiration for your own conflicts instead of being so defined as to try to shape your story), but for the most part they are more powerful than the PCs starting off.
Since there are no rules or guidelines for use when generating your NPCs it tends to boil down to a “that feels about right for this guy” game. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but in the case of Nine Worlds it means that the GM has to be good at judging just the right amount of adversity when he sets up those stats.
An example from recent play. My character, Aristo Denes, started off strong. I used a series of solid victories in the first couple of sessions to pump up some of my Muses making me a conflict winning beast. Three or four sessions later I resolved two or three of them at once. This gave me a lot of experience points, but it weakened my right-now conflict winning power.
The problem is that my conflicts were tending to be with NPCs of roughly the same power as before. While I had those big Muses (and was drawing all those extra cards) the adversity was just right; it was a real toss-up whether or not I could beat some of those guys. But without those Muses I started getting viciously stomped by my opposition. I think there may have been an entire session (maybe even two in a row) where I won no victories. (It is possible that this is not the case; Matt’s got recordings, so one day we can find out.)
Since you can only increase your Muses by winning victories, this had me stuck in a rut where it was unlikely for me to win, and getting into conflicts and losing them only made my opposition stronger for the next time we fought. It was, needless to say, somewhat disheartening (but still fun!).
I needed to win some conflicts to boost my Muses to fight the NPCs in question (since my character’s story pretty closely involved a number of them) so I decided to do what Fred Wolke calls “kicking puppies”. That is, I decided to frame some conflicts with weak NPCs that I was virtually guaranteed to beat so that I could grab some easy points and build up my Muses for later.
Specifically, I started up a fight with some Elite Aegis Agents who I whooped up on in the first session, but who haven’t been seen since. As I framed the conflict Matt considered, briefly, framing Herakles into it, but since I had made explicit my intention to fight a weak opponent, he decided not to.
So I do win, and I score something like 5 points. This is a nice start, but I am still at an overall deficit as I lost a couple of 7 and 8 point conflicts a session or two ago so my opposition is significantly stronger than I am with their Muses. However, as I remember things anyway (where are those recordings Matt?!), when I, as the winner of the first hand, decided to continue the conflict (this, by the way, is a super-clever mechanic) Matt brought in a new, stronger NPC. He is, unfortunately, not on the wiki, so I can’t point you at his numbers, but Matt basically made him up on the fly. It worked out fine in the end, I think I beat his Fate by a couple of points, but my “puppy kicking” was nipped in the bud.
This is supposed to point out that, ultimately, conflicts are sort of GM fiated. Matt, as GM, can introduce new NPCs to the conflict or bring in more powerful ones when appropriate. I am not actually against this in general, but there are no guidelines, especially no mechanical ones, for the GM to follow. Now, Matt is totally doing his best to be fair and keep things interesting, and for the most part he is good at it, but I am not so good at that sort of thing, and I fear what might happen if I ever ran a game of Nine Worlds.
Contrast this with Dogs in the Vineyard‘s proto-NPC generation which provides you stats for precisely 6 NPCs. You do not get mechanical resources for more than those six. Or look at Dungeons and Dragons CR system (as maligned as it might be) which makes an attempt to provide challenge level guidelines. Or even look at Primetime Adventures budget system: the GM can only throw so much at you before he runs out of resources.
Of course I really feel a bit bad singling out Nine Worlds like this, as there are tons of games that do similar things: Sorcerer, InSpectres, HeroQuest, and so on. And every single game I just listed I really enjoy playing. But, and this is why I brought the topic up at all, I think I would enjoy them better with a tighter oppositional structure.
I think this stems from the game part of the hobby. I like to evaluate my chances of succeeding and pick optimal paths for victory. That is just part of what I like to do. The same is not necessarily true of everyone else in the hobby, and so I wonder: people who do not find the crunch interesting, do they too wish for a more tightly guided opposition, or do the greater options and flexibility provided by not having those guidelines make play better for them?
I spoke with Ben Lehman about these issues I and he had two really good comments. first, he pointed out that the GM does not actually have total freedom when designating stats for NPCs because Matt has included stats for the most powerful NPCs I the gods, right in the text. This gives you a ceiling for NPC stats. While it is possible for the GM to make players the biggest possible foes in every conflict, if the PCs eventually reach a point that permits them to defeat the gods; the GM has limits.
Ben also explained that his understanding of the rules was that the player with narration rights could veto the introduction of new characters to a conflict. If this is the case (hopefully Matt will chime in) then I could have, if I had felt strongly about it, prevented Matt from introducing a new character and I could have kept kicking the puppies.
I bring all this up not so much to criticize Nine Worlds as to suggest that this is an important thing for game designers to consider. In our game Matt is good at judging numbers for opposition, but not everyone who wants to run or play Nine Worlds is going to be. Rules, or at the very least good solid guidelines, to help players to balance opposition no matter what their skill levels. If you don’t have something to help, you are going to stick some portion of your user-base with a period of trial and error during which they are having less fun than they could be. (Which is a great segue into a discussion of why some people don’t like learning new games, but I’ll let that wait for another day.)
Next week: The Paradox of Plot Twists
Tags: Applied