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Dealing with "chaos" in consequences-based (fiction first) games (self.rpg)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by Ziggurat to c/[email protected]

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This last decade, the big trend in game design has been the success with consequences that you'll find in system like FU RPG, * PTBA*, FITD and other I forget. A cool feature of the consequences it that it switch from the GM deciding every story point during preparation, in prepping an outline and fill it using the positive and negative "consequences" (e.g. in more classical game you decide that the dagger who killed the king is hidden in the bishop desk, on a fiction first game a partial success may-mean that while you're finding the dagger under the bishop bed, the bishop entre his room an asks you what you're doing.

Now the drawback, is that the whole game-flow can be more chaotic with consequences adding extra steps in the story. I see two difficulties with that kind of approach, one is very practical, making sure that the game session finishes before the last train so everyone can come home the other is finding the balance between staying in your campaign outline, and keeping your plot twist for the right moment, and drowning the PC over tons of consequences. I remember that after a Kult campaign, our GM told us about all the holds (consequences letting the setting do action against the PC) he didn't use to try to stay in the "plot" and not add extra complication to an already complicated story, but the same happen in many "consequences based games).

So out of curiosity, how do you deal with this layer of chaos. Do you go full chaotic, not prep anything and let the consequences driving the history, you limit the dice-roll to not stack up too much consequences for/against the PC ? Or do you adapt on a case by case basis ?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

I only played Karma in the Dark, I'm not sure how vanilla it is

In the end it's just a game. If skipping some consequences makes everyone happy with the game, then everyone is happy ;)
But my 2¢ would be:

GM told us about all the holds he didn’t use to try to stay in the “plot” and not add extra complication to an already complicated story

I think the plot might have been over-defined
1. Take a look at Onion Plots and Lazy GM, these work very well with loosely defined plots. Instead of having a plan point by point, have a "bag" of points to choose from when complication happens
2. I don't want to say railroaded because that's a loaded word, but I'd guess that they focused too much on how the job will progress, instead of the moving parts of the situation. Also, if the planned story was complicated in itself, maybe they moved too few of the planned complications to the "complications to reveal when a complication comes out from the dice" bag. You can have a few "really have to reveal those" in such a bag. It just takes a little practice to know how many
3. When a complication happens, it does not have to be a plot-changing heavy hitter. I'm not familiar with Kult but a consequence could also be a Clock that means "someone in the setting will figure out something (connections, location, identity) when it fills". And it's ok if it lays dormant for a few other jobs. When you have many plot Clocks open it can lead to culmination when a few of these suddenly fill up a few jobs later. "play to find out" also means that there will be some loose ends in the plot, you never know if a random 4-out-of-6 Clock won't come in handy just before a plot-important job to raise the tension
4. When a consequence occurs, the GM has the control over how hard it is in fiction - whether it should be a twist or just business as usual
A consequence does not have to be a complication. It can be
- a lower effect - you are progressing towards the goal but the obstacle is well guarded and so far only managed to get half-way
- harm - if the fiction is in a state you want to keep, you can always deal harm as a cop-out. A sprained ankle can happen to everyone
- lost opportunity - you hear footsteps down the hall
Complication does not have to be something right here and right now. "When hacking the node an ICE managed to identify part of your signature. This is not a Trace Clock, but if you don't Resist or address it somehow later on, your Contact/Hideout will be in trouble because the Police (not the Corp yet - here's my choice on gravity) will come looking for you and they won't be asking nicely"