Dramatic Hooks?

[Nyrath]

I've played plenty of different RPGs, but when it comes to simulating multiple genres, the Hero system is king.

 

As a game master, Hero gives me the tools to simulate almost anything my players can imagine. However, my problem is the opposite. As a game master, it can be difficult to come up with a unique adventure every playing session, without it falling into a rut. I guess it is a lack of imagination on my part.

 

Anyway I was reading some game reviews when I ran across an interesting game mechanism in an RPG called "The Riddle of Steel". This is the so called "Spiritual Attribute" or "Dramatic Hook".

 

You can find a quick run-down on this mechanism here.

 

What naturally caught my attention is the fact that one of the side effects is having the players drive the plot instead of the game master. Or at the very least give the Game Master a clue as to what kind of game the players want. A plus for an unimaginative game master.

 

So I'm toying with the idea of grafting the Dramatic Hook mechanism into the Hero system as a sort of house rule. I'm trying to decide what the best way to do this.

 

The Riddle of Steel is a so called "dice pool" type game, and the Dramatic Hook give more dice to the pool. To translate this into Hero, my best guess is to have the DH grant temporary overall levels or specific levels.

 

What do you think?

[Trebuchet]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

That is a very cool idea; thank you for posting that link.

 

It's a tremendously powerful concept for role-playing; although I suspect it might be more applicable in heroic/fantasy games than in most superheroic. I'm going out of town for a week, but when I get back I'm going to take a closer look and kick this idea around with my fellow GMs.

 

Oh, and welcome to the boards.

 

PS: If you didn't have any Reputation yet, you do now.

[LordGhee]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

A mighty Welcome to the Boards, this will be a great dicussion. I am digesting information hope to post soon on this ideal.

 

Thanks

 

Lord Ghee

[Trebuchet]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

Ghee, I'm glad you saw this thread; I was going to tell you about it. This might be a great idea for your Fantasy Hero campaign to get the PCs to "stick to the script."

[SirViss]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

I'm just posting so I can keep track of this thread. New GM here, and anythign that can give me ideas as to what new plots the players would like is a bonus!

[Agent X]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

I've thought about doing something similar. I've considered allowing characters to have bonus OCV/DCV against appropriate foes. In other words, no one knows or is motivated as much as Superman when it comes to fighting Bizarro. It makes sense for members of a character's rogues gallery.

[Agent X]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

I'm just posting so I can keep track of this thread. New GM here' date=' and anythign that can give me ideas as to what new plots the players would like is a bonus! [/quote']If you are running Champions the Champions Genre Book has a random plot generation tool that's pretty decent. You could always show it to your players and take note of which parts they seem to like the most. Another thing (forgive me if this is too obvious) is to ask your players what they like to read, watch, etc.

[SirViss]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

If you are running Champions the Champions Genre Book has a random plot generation tool that's pretty decent. You could always show it to your players and take note of which parts they seem to like the most. Another thing (forgive me if this is too obvious) is to ask your players what they like to read' date=' watch, etc.[/quote']

 

I do have the Champions Genre book, and know about the random generator. Thanks for the reminder though. It's been a while since i last looked at it.

 

As to asking the players what they want, I already have. I may be new to GMing, but I have played RPGs for 14 years or so!

Problems is, the answer I have gotten from then is: "Run what you want, we trust you!" Problem is I don't trust myself quite yet.

[Agent X]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

I do have the Champions Genre book, and know about the random generator. Thanks for the reminder though. It's been a while since i last looked at it.

 

As to asking the players what they want, I already have. I may be new to GMing, but I have played RPGs for 14 years or so!

Problems is, the answer I have gotten from then is: "Run what you want, we trust you!" Problem is I don't trust myself quite yet.

Well, tell them that. Tell them you want their input.

 

Here's the trick to enjoying GMing. You have to feel like you did a good job and you have to enjoy your story. To do a good job means the players should come out of the session having enjoyed themselves. So find out what they like and pick the things out of what they like that you like and go from there. If they still don't give you any input, run a published adventure, but study it like there is no tomorrow. You'll feel more confident and you'll be more successful with any modifications you make to it to tell your story.

 

You know, the characters they build will tell you a lot about what they want. If they build a bunch of martial arts crimefighters they want to take on gangs and superpowered mooks. If they build a bunch of flying blasters and power armored scientists, the feel is very different. They want to stop bigger, flashier crimes that involve more technologically oriented villains. Play off the themes of their characters. Design their foes to demonstrate some aspect of their character, a villain involved in their origin story, a villain who has a similar theme in powers, a villain who has the opposite theme in powers a la light man vs. dark man, a villain who represents what the hero would be like if he chose to become a villain, that sort of thing. Once you have a bunch of villains that revolve around their character concepts, the stories should flow out of you very naturally.

[LordGhee]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

The read Intresting thing is that champions provides Dramatic hook in the charater creations process.

 

Limitaions

 

Many times have i sat down before a game reviewed my players charaters and gleame a session from a NPC or hunted (the easy ones) i have seem to roll 3 ones on watch rolls and gotten a hunted result.

 

The one that conviced me that disadvantages where excellent was when after discovering Trebs Hero range Id in combat the villians researched him and then Help his Dnpc sister regain her ability to walk - - - oh by the way Phone for you it your sister -villian to ranger over the empire state building.

 

Hooks should be used gently.

 

Funny that this conversation has come up, in my new Fanasty game I am having trouble getting a player to do anything I got a meta hook in that he ows his family money which is working well. But every other adventure offerd has been turn down. I am keep a list of thease adventures. so this is a valid point in GMing.

 

How do you hook, what bait to big a line and the fish see it and bolt.

 

Lord Ghee

[tesuji]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

 

As a game master, Hero gives me the tools to simulate almost anything my players can imagine. However, my problem is the opposite. As a game master, it can be difficult to come up with a unique adventure every playing session, without it falling into a rut. I guess it is a lack of imagination on my part.

Whenever i am stymied as to "whats next" i pull out the character backgrounds and write ups and go from there. One of them will typically give me a notion of something cool to run.

 

heck, in fact, usually around 75% of my campaign stems directly from the character backgrounds. Before seeing PCs, my design is usually more generic than anything else, but once i have PCs, i plum those for, as you say , "what they want to run."

 

I have started more than a few campaigns with a 2-3 session arc full of action with vague undertones of "something doesn't add up" and myself using that couple of weeks to work out "what is going on" from their backgrounds.

Anyway I was reading some game reviews when I ran across an interesting game mechanism in an RPG called "The Riddle of Steel". This is the so called "Spiritual Attribute" or "Dramatic Hook".

Ars Magica has passions, which seemed similar. Basically you can pick any adjective and assign a value to it and when working with it you can get the bonuses and when not you are fine and sometimes it can work against you.

 

What i use in my current game i call tendencies. A player can assign a large number of tendencies a value. Tendencies can be one word or more and they describe a feature of the character's personality. Examples might be brave, cowardly, romantic, vengeful, protective, rebellious, etc. When the character acts in a way definitely favoring the tendency, he adds his tendency rank to his "init", so he goes faster. (He tends to decide to go in line with his tendencies with less hesitation. he tends to jump to those choices first.) When he goes directly against the grain, it acts as a penalty.

 

So for example, a character who has vengeful when encountering his target, if he decides to attack he will act quickly, adding his vengeful number to his init, helping him to be the first in. if things start going badly and he decides to pull out, his init score drops as he is reluctant to leave the opportunity. He will likely be the last out.

 

On occasion, i allow the tendency as a modifier to rolls, but not commonly.

What naturally caught my attention is the fact that one of the side effects is having the players drive the plot instead of the game master. Or at the very least give the Game Master a clue as to what kind of game the players want. A plus for an unimaginative game master.

While it may be summarized in the spiritual stuff, i often found that you got enough from character backgrounds, and of course, the disads list might provide similar info and hooks.

So I'm toying with the idea of grafting the Dramatic Hook mechanism into the Hero system as a sort of house rule. I'm trying to decide what the best way to do this.

 

The Riddle of Steel is a so called "dice pool" type game, and the Dramatic Hook give more dice to the pool. To translate this into Hero, my best guess is to have the DH grant temporary overall levels or specific levels.

 

What do you think?

 

I might try it as LUCK, limited to the given purpose. if you want to standardize it, you could try this:

 

1 dice luck 5 ap. 3 rp -1/2 only when pursuing defined personality trait.

 

Luck is fairly flexible, especially if you use the rerolls per session notion, and not as sweeping as skill levels. You could have players buy their luck dice and then, when they hit their idiom, roll the luck dice. One totally ephemeral benefit would be the "Hey! this is my scene. Break out themluck dice!" kind of feel of rolling the benefits. It sort of puts a physical cue for "this is personal!"

 

If you wanted to codify the other side of this, with the passion sometimes being against the character, you could try giving the player a number of dice of unluck to match up, with the same limitation for "only when working contrary to the personality trait." You could even allow the characters to take a certain number of dice for free, with the offset of equal dice of unluck. I might limit that to say 3 free dice, more if you buy them.

[Nyrath]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

Hmmmm, Luck. I hadn't thought of that.

 

As Trebuchet noted, the Dramatic Hook mechanism is probably better suited for Heroic campaigns in general, and Heroic Fantasy campaigns in particular.

 

The only think I'm leary about is the element of Game Master fiat in the Luck rules. Players do not enjoy having the survival of their characters depending on the whim of the GM, so it is probably a good idea to avoid anything resembling that.

 

In the original Riddle Of Steel game, the designer had an ax to grind. He wanted to enforce gameplay that resembled a dramatic fantasy novel. The combat was ramped up to "Very Deadly" (looks to me like the equivalent of all attacks doing killing damage, and no resistant defenses). Entering a fight without help from one's Dramatic Hooks was tantamount to suicide.

 

So the actual "riddle of steel" is "what is important enough for you to risk dying for?". The players answer that question when they assign Dramatic Hooks during character creation.

 

The designer of Riddle Of Steel made the combat deadly as a sort of gameplaying darwinism. Players who do not adhere to the dramatic fantasy novel troupe have their characters die with depressing regularity. I'm not sure I want to go that far, but it might be interesting to experiment with it.

 

Another interesting twist rewards players in another way. Dramatic Hook use is recorded and points are awarded. When a character dies, these bonus points can be used in creating the next character. This encourages players to give their characters big dramatic deaths. They are rewarded with an even better character.

[tesuji]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

Hmmmm, Luck. I hadn't thought of that.

 

So, can your riddle be " I like to fight, a lot!"?

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Dramatic Hooks?

 

In the original Riddle Of Steel game' date=' the designer had an ax to grind. He wanted to enforce gameplay that resembled a dramatic fantasy novel. The combat was ramped up to "Very Deadly" [i'](looks to me like the equivalent of all attacks doing killing damage, and no resistant defenses)[/i]. Entering a fight without help from one's Dramatic Hooks was tantamount to suicide.

 

Hmm. I think you could do lots using disadvantages as well. The X2 STUN and x2 BODY stuff could be quite important if they applied to attacks against you in fights where your Hooks did not apply....

 

Doc

[trechriron]

Spiritual Attributes in HERO

 

These things rule! SAs are by far the one of coolest ideas IMO. The kicker here is that they not only improve your chances to do stuff BUT they are also the experience engine for TROS. By pursuing your SAs you earn more SA points. At then end of the game you can trade in SA points for XP. It is the only way they award XP in the TROS.

 

The SAs are things like courage, faith, compassion, drive, destiny, etc. They need to be something specific regarding your character. You can also change them out when you want to allow them to better apply as the character evolves. These are tantamount to telling your GM “This is what is important to my character and this is what I am striving for in the gameâ€. You then get rewarded in several ways when you pursue your SAs. You improve your odds to accomplish things, you get awarded more SA points on the spot for drama, impact, etc for using them, and at the end of the game you trade them in for XP.

 

Here is how I would do this in HERO (this has not been play tested).

 

Spiritual Attribute: Luck 1d6, Inherent (+1/4) (6 Active Points); 4 Charges (Recovers Under Limited Circumstances; -1), Conditional Power Can only be used when situation deals with nature of spiritual attribute (-1/2), Luck is rolled and total equals number of dice that can be re-rolled for the remainder of the situation (as determined by the GM), maximum of 4 charges can be obtained for one spiritual attribute. Real Cost: 2.

 

The max for this would be four charges, only recovered as the GM awards them for dramatic play regarding the spiritual attribute. Then instead of the normal XP awards, allow the players to trade up to 3 charges for 3 XP in a session. Also allow them to change the SAs as the character evolves. I would limit this to no more than five SAs (like TROS), however you should allow them to spend as many charges as they want in a situation dealing with their SAs. You should allow characters to start the game with five spiritual attributes and give them 10-15 charges for free. I would still track them as CP in their totals, but giving them free charges will help you as the GM see what is important to them from the beginning.

 

Note that if your characters are working hard towards their SAs, at 3 XP per session they are going to improve quickly. Some sessions may not get into any of the characters SAs and not all characters SAs will be addressed every session so this may balance out over the long run (as they spend them and do not receive any SA awards for a session or two). I would have to actually play this out to see if it works and what adjustments are needed, but this is the general idea I would shoot for.

[zornwil]

Re: Spiritual Attributes in HERO

 

Great idea, I think it's interesting, not sure if I'll implement it/anything like it but will be thinking about it.