Please Don't Break the World!

ACK! YOU'RE BREAKING THE GAME, OR PLEASE DON'T BREAK THE WORLD!

In A&E #398, I talked about how I sometimes panic when a player has an unexpected idea, convinced it will break the game, but, after the initial "Ack" reaction passes, and I've had a chance to think about it rationally, nine times out of ten, it turns out that the idea isn't actually game breaking, and is, indeed, rather cool. "Breaking the game", I said, was not the same as breaking my planned idea of What Will Happen", and part of becoming a good GM is learning the difference between the two.

Lee asked whether "breaking the game" means "breaking the campaign background you've worked out and loved" or "breaking the game mechanics". It might mean either of those, but is more likely to mean the second. It might also mean "breaking sufficient consistency" or "breaking my suspension of disbelief", although that's more likely to get me saying, "No, because..." rather than "Ack!" It might also mean "breaking game balance". Let me see if I can give examples of all of these, including "breaking my planned idea of what will happen" and "breaking the plot", which I feel that I should not have a problem with, and "breaking plots", as in "destroying the possibility of there being plot".

I. First, the easy stuff:

1. Breaking the GM's idea of What Will Happen

This covers a lot of ground. For example, in the Strange School game, some things I thought would be important turned out to be of little interest to the players, while some things I tossed in as grace notes garnered a lot of interest. None of this is a problem.

If I introduce an NPC expecting him or her to be important, loved, hated, or whatever, and the PCs react differently than I had planned, this should be just fine. Either the NPC will prove his or her worth or perfidy -- or the NPC won't, and that's all right. There's only an issue if some players react very positively to an NPC and others react very negatively, and that's not a question of the GM's idea of what will happen so much as it is a group dynamic question about how the world works.

In one Cthulhupunk Plus Twenty session, I had an NPC enemy put a cursed charm on Avram's PC, Laura, who was a werewolf. As it was the night of the full moon, she was in wolf form. The charm made her very angry, and she was facing the wall. I told Avram that Laura was very angry at the wall, figuring that he would have her attack it physically.

But, Laura had other talents, talents relating to electricity. So, Avram said that she would attack the wall by using her power on the wiring within it. It would have been completely inappropriate for me to say no simply because this was something I had not thought of. After asking how wiring and walls worked, I agreed that the wall probably would spontaneously combust, freaking out the enemy who had expected the wolf to jump at it or something.

One case where I definitely messed up: Near the end of the Plus 20 game, I ran an adventure where the PCs traveled to 19th century Africa in an attempt to prevent Xan, an evil NPC from ascending to godhood. The session ended in a climactic three way struggle between Lauara, a PC who was carrying a copy of a NPC who wanted to ascend, Xan, and a semi-allied NPC, Istrae, all trying to ascend. And, it was Really Obvious to all, as I said in my write up, that "I was using my control of the pacing and calling for multiple rolls to keep Xan from winning too easily."

After all, my idea of What Would Happen was that Xan would lose. But, really, there was no reason he couldn't win, leaving the PCs with the interesting problem of how to deal with a death shaman who had been their enemy and was now a god. There was no need to try to stop this outcome.

Part of why I did was lack of preparation. Again, to quote from my write up:

-- -- --

I ought to have had fairly clear criteria for what was necessary for an ascension, whether that was

-- The first candidate to reach a specific target number

-- The first candidate to get the highest number after X rounds

-- The candidate who met the most criteria for ascending. I would have figured these out ahead of time and tracked which criteria were met by which candidates over time.

-- Any combination of the above

-- Something else entirely

For example, Istrae has powers relating to death magic and mental manipulation, so those may have been criteria. Xan met these criteria as well, and it is probably no coincidence that this was the ascension ceremony he tried to usurp. Istrae also had pyrokinesis, while Laura had the not unrelated power of electrokinesis.

-- -- --

2. Breaking the plot

During a convention game run by Michael Miller, one of the players said, "I hope I'm not breaking the plot by doing this."

Michael said, "The plot that can be derailed is meant for a movie or a tv show, not a roleplaying game." This does not mean that a GM should railroad the players through an unbreakable script. Rather, it means that if the game is actually ruined because the players did something unexpected, the gamemaster is doing a bad job.

If I find myself plotting a session where I have to keep adding extra stuff to keep the PCs from breaking the plot, I should be asking myself, "Is this the wrong plot?"

I did this once for a Cthulhupunk Plus 20 session. I'd originally planned to have the young PCs who were either in or associated with the band Age of Consent invited to a party which would turn out to be a trap. Satanists would menace the group, subduing them and necessitating a fight / escape.

But, I had to do so much patching of holes to explain how it was that the PCs were subdued long enough for initial threats -- heck, for that matter, how it was that the more paranoid PCs didn't smell a rat to begin with -- that I asked myself, "Is this a viable plot?" Sadly, I told myself that it was not. And then, I was able to run it anyway.

This was due entirely to a key player not being able to make the session. This was Matt Stevens, whose PC, Honggong, had been set up by the Satanists in a previous session. That is, they had set up a situation where Honggong, the buff bodyguard for the band Age of Consent, thought she was rescuing the woman who was secretly head of the Satanists. This was why the woman would be inviting her and her friends to the party to begin with.

With Matt missing the session, I asked if he'd mind if I victimized Honggong. Since Honggong had amazing healing powers, Matt was fine with this so long as she was back in fighting trim by the next session. So, the active PCs didn't go to the party and didn't have to be stupid. They could rescue Honggong and the NPCs who went with her. But, if this had not been the case, the plot would have been cut.

Now, there are cases where players and GM agree that the players have to work with the GM and not break the plot. This may be because it's a convention game or a home sessions with a somewhat weak set up. This may involve the GM confessing as much and saying, "Guys, please work with me here, because otherwise, I don't have anything to run." At one Call of Cthulhu game at Origins, at least two of the players, including me, thought it was really stupid to expect the PCs not to try to contact outside authorities after discovering that a huge amount of explosives had been stolen. The GM explained that the PCs really were expected to just go on and explore the mine anyway. I exchanged a look with the other player who was clearly having a problem with this, and then he voiced the thought we both shared: "Well, that doesn't make much sense, but sure. I don't want to bring the game to a crashing halt."

It may be because everyone has agreed to play by certain genre conventions. If we have agreed that the PCs are noble heroes who never break their word, then if a PC promises to let a villain go, alive and unharmed, the GM is well within her rights to protest if the player, with no warning or explanation, decides that her PC will then shoot the villain dead. I remember being thrown by Naomi playing a supposed pacifist trucker in a decidedly non-pacifist fashion, although this didn't break the plot.

And, kudos to Matt Stevens and Ian Harac. Matt once listened to see whether Fred Herman's PC would shoot one of the all time great villains I have loved hating in the chest or in the head. If the PC had shot the villain in the head, Matt would have ruled that the man was dead, no questions asked. But, Fred said, "No, this is pulp. Of course I shoot him in the chest." And, Matt had decided ahead of time that the man was armored there, and could merely pretend to be dead, with fake blood and stuff. Oh, my PC rode with what he thought was the corpse, just to make sure, but he got overcome by the escaping villain fair and square. And Ian rolled with it when, without warning, my bounty hunter PC shot an unarmed woman who was merely being annoying, despite Ian considering her one of his best NPCs.

3. Breaking consistency

This can be consistency of character or consistency of rulings. "Can I have a wand of fireballs?" is a question to which I would answer "No." It would not necessarily break the game, but this isn't consistent with how magic works in the Cthulhupunk.

This also covers what we dubbed Egyptian Gun Syndrome, where a player asked how long it would take his PC to get a gun in Egypt. I told him two days. He said that in that case, he wouldn't bother. But, he forgot he said that, so after two days, he asked if his PC now had a gun. I said no, and everyone reminded him that he'd said the PC wouldn't bother. He accepted this and asked how long it would take his PC to get a gun. I said two days. He said that his PC wouldn't bother. Lather, rinse, repeat. The player wasn't being difficult; he just had a lousy memory.

4. Breaking the GM's suspension of disbelief

Matt once proposed a character who had been bitten by a radioactive copy of the Necronomicon, blind old Issac who, from his wheelchair, could destroy the world if only he could stop drooling long enough. He was not serious, and my reaction of "No! No! No!" was the only sane one.

Similarly, in most, though not all, games, if a player says, "Can I hit the moon with an arrow?" the answer is "No."

On a less absurd note, in Erik Hanson's Ars Mystica game, Rachel Tang wanted her pagan midwife to be able to convince an archbishop to reverse his stance on the faerie folk. After all, her character had skills of persuasion and similar things. Erik said that while the skill would get her a hearing, and he would take the die roll into account, there was simply no way that the PC could instantly persuade the archbishop to change the religious view on faeries that he had held for years. Erik was not being unreasonable, imao, but there is a communication issue there, since if the rules aren't explicit -- and I think no rule set can be explicit enough to cover every eventuality that may arise in an rpg -- the player may feel like she is not getting what she is paying for.

II. Now, the meat of the matter:

1. Breaking the game mechanics

If there are actually mechanics that cover a situation, and I am actually on top of the mechanics, as I should be, but often am not, this is not an "Ack!" situation. This is a "No, because the game mechanics don't work that way" situation.

For example, in the larp Masks, one player said, "Okay, my PC has commando training. Can I sneak up on this other PC and snap her neck before anyone else notices?"

The lead GM, quite properly, said, "No. That is not how the combat rules work."

The commando training was a background detail, not a game mechanic. If it had been a game mechanic, the player would have an ability card explaining how the Commando Training Ability worked.

But, I don't tend to use a lot of mechanics. In some ways, this makes headaches for me that are entirely my own fault. My players have tried to help me. For example, Avram once said, "Okay, I think you'd feel more comfortable with a clear idea of what magic can and can't do. Here's a list of stuff. Which of these can magic do, and which of them can't it do?"

And, the problem was, I looked at it, and couldn't actually answer, partly because some things were sort of yes-sort of no, and the rest were, "Um, I don't know, and I'm terrified of letting anything like that into the game." In other words, I was going "Ack!" at the idea of creating mechanics that would keep me from going "Ack!"

I think that this is something I will just have to accept and work with. I tend to be more comfortable with consensus-fiat and with the laws of drama and story telling. These have their disadvantage, but they are more compatible with my style.

2. Destroying the possibility of there being plot / of there being a particular type of plot

This is a problem. It comes in two flavors:

a. I cannot run X type of plot if I say yes.

If the PCs or an allied NPC who is not amazingly difficult to contact can see if someone is possessed, this means that I cannot run a plot where the Big Reveal is that the PCs' trusted ally has been possessed by the Big Bad all along.

This may be a problem. If so, I need to make sure that there is no sure fire way to spot someone who is possessed. Or, it may be that I am relying on the NPC-is-possessed too much. Maybe it's time to get away from that kind of plot.

Which is it? That will depend on the group and the campaign.

b. I cannot run any plot if I say yes.

Now, this is much more of an issue. What sorts of things break not merely one type of plot, but all plots?

Beth created an NPC named Leona Quirm for Cthulhupunk Plus Twenty. She started off as a talented technosorceress, and as such, worked as an NPC adding both flavor and occasional aid in to the PCs in the form of gadgetry.

After the Plus Twenty game wrapped, I continued to run adventures for Beth, Josh, and Naomi, using the various PCs and NPCs they'd created. Beth wanted to do more with Leona. For example, Leona had once been advised that she could not handle a particular villain, as he was too powerful for her. She decided that she should be able to handle anyone in her own home. Oh, not kill or anything like that, merely neutralize until they could be handed over to the appropriate authorities. And she was rich, in the good graces of the USA government, and talented. And that's before she tried to hire good help.

Basically, what Leona wanted was a Fortress of Solitude. Well, not necessarily solitude, but definitely an uncrackable fortress. Beth also described the kinds of devices Leona wanted to carry with her to protect herself when she went out.

Now, normally, saying that a character can create both an uncrackable fortress and personal protective devices could break an entire campaign. The reason this wasn't that kind of issue is that one limit Beth put in was that Leona was an artist, not a scientist. She couldn't mass produce her items or even necessarily repeat herself. I didn't have to worry about her stuff producing mass peace and no more adventures.

But, as I noted to Beth, what she wanted for Leona meant that Leona was utterly unviable as a PC. What did Leona normally do? Live in her wonderful fortress -- and I use the word "wonderful" without irony or sarcasm here -- and host gatherings of artists and engineers and other guests, dealing firmly and non-lethally with any violence or extreme incivility. I did run, with Beth's and Josh's foreknowledge and connivance, a single Leona-gets-kidnapped adventure, where her friend, Josh's NPC Asha, rescued her. But, after that, there was little doubt that Leona's impressive array of protective devices would be upgraded.

In short, I said, Leona was turning into A Patron. The actual PCs in a Leona-type campaign would be working for her, perhaps globetrotting, ala Charlie's Angels. This intrigued Beth, although we didn't actually do anything with it. She did play Leona in a couple of adventures as a secondary character, but she always had other characters who were more focal.

All of this is a relatively painless case of absorbing something that might break the world by making the sorts of plots I enjoy running and I think Beth enjoys playing unviable.

In _The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor_, a campaign setting for _Monsters and Other Childish Things_, if a PC leaves the campaign setting of Candlewick Vale, that PC is out of the game. Period. The author is very up front about this. It is not possible to run plots for PCs who leave the setting.

Does leaving the setting break the game? Not necessarily. I could see the PCs leaving the Vale as a final scene in a campaign. Or, as the author notes, if a player wants her PC to leave, but still wants to keep playing, the player can create another PC who does not leave the Vale.

3. Breaking game balance

This is related to breaking the game mechanics, but even when I have few to no specific crunchy mechanics, there's still a balance. This may not be a traditional balance.

For example, in the original Cthulhupunk game, Alec Andersan started as a normal news reporter and private eye. George Stevenson started as a mostly normal con artist and television talk show host, although I decided that he did have some sidhe blood. Harry Kelton started out as an unaging, nigh indestructible, centuries-old ersatz Zelazny character. Professor Eric Bludendorf was a humane vampire, immune to sunlight, although his vampire abilities only worked at night. Yet, these four very PCs balanced each other well. They were sufficiently good at a sufficient number of different things. Schtick dilution was largely avoided. And, the players were on the same page about the feel of the game they wanted.

On the other hand, Theseus, an ironically-named minotaur, was unbalanced. He could create illusions, and even though they only affected sight, this (possibly with some other abilities I am forgetting) proved disruptive enough over the first few sessions that Sam, who played Theseus, and I agreed that we should let the PC succeed in his quest to return home. Sam then played the Cthulhupunk world's version of Peter Venkman, and that worked out much better.

4. Breaking the game world / campaign background that the GM has worked out and loved

I may have blotted most instances of the "Ack!" reaction from my memory. I do recall one, though.

I was running something from a Call of Cthulhu Dreamlands adventure where the PCs were physically in the Dreamlands, rather than having only their dream selves there. According to the rules, and I was actually using the rules, the PCs' clothing and items would turn into their Dreamlands analogue. So, a gun might become a crossbow (although this raised interesting questions, given that the rules said, if I recall correctly, that there were no guns in the Dreamlands because Dreamlands technology was 500 years behind the waking world, and I'm not sure if that actually would mean no guns, but never mind that).

From the session:

GM: Tell me what you have, and I'll tell you what it becomes.

Mike: Silver dagger.

GM: No change.

Mike: Cellular phone.

GM: Um...

Avram: A tin can with a string going into the sky?

GM: No, a crystal ball!

Matt: Will it work in the waking world?

GM: No. Maybe. I don't know. Let me think about that.

Josh: Can I turn into a coyote?

GM: No. Maybe. I don't know. Let me think about that.

"No. Maybe. I don't know. Let me think about that." This was my equivalent of "Ack!" My eventual ruling was that James couldn't become a coyote, but the crystal balls in the waking world could be used to contact anyone in the Dreamlands who had her own crystal ball.

Later on, in the Plus 20 game, I loosened up on magic, and allowed James Firemaker to turn into a coyote, both in the Dreamlands and in the waking world, justifying the change in how magic worked by noting that the Outer Gods had been banished and there was a techno-magical ward around the world.

But, my fears about allowing crystal balls to work in the waking world weren't utterly foolish. As either Avram or Josh pointed out, logically, the PCs could drive a truck filled with cell phones into the Dreamlands and then drive the resulting wagon full of crystal balls back. That just felt so wrong!

Avram agreed, and when I asked why he hadn't said anything earlier, pointed out that he wasn't about to protest the PCs getting good stuff like crystal balls. I was able to justify a change in how the Dreamlands worked when King Kuranes got killed off, and the players didn't mind not being able to do the cell phone / crystal ball swap. After all, anyone who wanted a crystal ball already had one.

In other games, doing the cell phone / crystal ball swap might not be a problem. It all depends on the feel you're going for.

The game world includes both the macrocosmic and microcosmic levels. This means that "breaking the game world" can include "breaking an NPC". "Breaking an NPC" may mean killing the NPC off or preventing the NPC from doing whatever it was that the GM had planned, but this is more likely to fall into the category of "breaking the GM's idea of What Will Happen".

I didn't go "Ack" when Avram suggested, I don't remember how seriously, that his PC, Laura, switch one of the villain Hanoi Xan's smoke grenades for some kind of bomb so that when Xan set off what he thought was a smoke bomb to cover his escape, he'd actually wind up immolating himself and dying. But, I did veto that on the ground that I thought it would break the gameworld by turning Xan into a bad joke and Xan's death into an anticlimax.

Or perhaps my veto was a more subdued version of "Ack!", as later on, it occurred to me that if the PCs could actually pull off a switch between a smoke grenade and a bomb, they would have done enough work for it to feel cool and not silly. But, at that point, Avram and I agreed that changing my mind wouldn't really work.

The GM may not be the only player who likes the game world and campaign background and doesn't want it broken. For example, in the Strange School game, Chris thought that it was a mistake for me to have the thousand year old vampire playing Frisbee Free For All with the students.

And, of course, there's the usual

5. Of course, Julian Lighton may have a point when he says that my "Ack!" means that I'm afraid whatever's being proposed will break me. But, he's mostly tongue in cheek. I don't think my head really explodes.