I kicked off 2016 the right way: I showed my young sister-in-law Return of the Jedi for the first time, completing her viewing of the Original Trilogy in time to take her to see The Force Awakens this weekend. As I was watching it, some thoughts rattled around in my head, so I decided I would talk about them.
The Star Wars movies make really great use of Jump Points. Not quite perfect, I’d say, since everyone always winds up scattered and dealing with things sequentially rather than simultaneously. While I admit that simultaneity of crises isn’t necessary for a good Jump Point, I would imagine it works better than “So you two show up at the crime lord’s palace… and okay, so later, you two walk in… and okay, so finally you show up.” But, I digress.
Star Wars has really awesome Jump Points! “Your Military Personality Leia stands before Jabba… Hey, Industrial Explorer Chewie, what con are you two running to get close to the Scoundrel Starfarer Han? Oh, she’s posing as a bounty hunter and you as her prisoner? Rad… And hey, Leia why is Jabba about to take you seriously? Oh shit, you have a LIVE GRENADE in your hand? Hell yeah, okay, let’s go from there…” That is so rad! It goes off great, with a perfect 10+ and Chewie is in the palace waiting for the breakout, and then it all goes downhill with a really bad miss while defrosting Han.
This is just such a fun way to start off a session, especially if the GM keeps a good pace and keeps things moving — this part in the movie runs for something like 15 or 20 minutes before the whole band is back together and about to get eaten by the Sarlacc. There’s definitely something to learn here: be like George Lucas… don’t leave any players sitting around doing nothing for very long; round ’em up, and throw them all into danger fast as you can.
Second thought, and probably the more interesting thought: oh man I frickin’ loved that lightsaber duel with Vader at the end. Jeez. And as I watched it, I processed stuff that I totally knew before, but that I was seeing differently now that I have Uncharted Worlds in my brain. Like, scope this out: obviously Vader is dangerous, sure, so he’s a Threat (Agenda: “Push Luke to the Dark Side” I figure). But if Luke makes his roll, then the fights over, right? No way! Vader as a person isn’t the only threat here!
Remember, after all, that Anakin Skywalker was a master swordsman! His form and superior swordsmanship (because, honestly, Vader is the better duelist of the pair — Luke only beats him by giving in to Dark Side) are a Threat in and of themselves! Can your Mystic Explorer (or whatever you want to call Luke) work through Vader’s [Superior Defense] (its agenda is to “Protect Vader” probably) to even land a blow? Hell, if you wanted to, you could even throw [Dread] on top as its own Threat! Luke obviously didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to fight his father, especially not being egged on by the Emperor as he was! I think [Dread] is a perfect Threat, and its Agenda is probably “Weaken Resolve.” So that’s Three Threats right? But in a Star Wars game, The Dark Side is probably a constant, ubiquitous Threat… and then there’s Palpatine with his Control of the Imperial Machine, Force Lightning, Lightsaber Skills, and whatever else you can imagine…
Return of the Jedi showed me that THIS is how you make one-on-one fights in Space Opera resonate mechanically. You, as the MC, still need to bring the pathos, the scene building, the stake-setting and all that to the table… but if you feel like a one-and-done roll deflates the drama? Remember that Threats come in all shapes and sizes! They’re not all Slugs on sailbarges getting choked out (uh, THAT was a one-and-done roll to kill a Threat!). Some of your Threats have impossible levels of training that must be overcome, reputations that cripple their enemies’ spirits, and all manner of advantages even before the PCs can take an honest swing at the Bad Guy behind the mask! Think beyond the dude being thrashed on by your PC when you want to make the fight feel mechanically heavy — think about the reasons why this dude is so dangerous, or why this situation is so threatening and important… I bet you’ll find what you’re looking for.
And hey, this is my first post under the hashtag #UnchartedMedia (or #MediaMonday , take your pick) where I hope to ramble about how the sci-fi goodness we consume can influence the games we run! I’m going to try and do a few of these each week, and I would love it if the community got involved in responding or making their own #UnchartedMedia posts!
Nice analysis. Lots of “you need to overcome this before you even think about landing a blow” is definitely the right way to handle challenging single opponents in Uncharted Worlds (and Dungeon World, and I imagine the rest of the AW hackdom).
A couple of interesting related things I thought of reading your post:
The 16 HP Dragon (http://apocalypse-world.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=e145b04a287d40e836882d5e2df46d60&topic=2693.msg16185#msg16185)
Darths & Droids (http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/1212.html)
This is an amazing post, thanks! It’s also a much more fleshed out (and mechanically interesting) example of play that I was pushing to Filo Becherucci earlier. I hope he sees this!
This is a fantastic post. You know that “head explode” hand gesture? That’s me. Your re-interpretation of the Jabba’s Palace gambit as a Jump Point is spot on.
I really like that you pointed out the aspect of Fear as a Threat, because that’s one thing I’ve been trying to tease together for one of the FBH chapters (after all, the Dark Gods of the cosmos are frightening, otherworldly things).
And yeah, the whole point of the way Threats are built is that you can scale up or down a scenario by adding “obstacles” between the player and what they want. I admit, I hadn’t quite considered the implication of Master Swordsmanship (Agenda: Deflect melee attacks, dismember the idiot that tries) as a Threat when I originally wrote the section, but man am I glad you guys are finding cool stuff to do with it.
I think there’s a lot of interesting conversation to be found in comparing/contrasting how UW handles scale-of-danger with how other PbtA games do the same thing. The 16HP dragon is a great example… Why is it so dangerous? It has some terrifying tags! Play them to the hilt, embrace the fiction of them!
But if you come across a Mandallan Star-wyrm in your UW game, it doesn’t have tags… UW doesn’t do “enemy tags” in the strictest sense. But really, isn’t that what we’re ultimately describing when we write up a series of compounded threats and their agendas? We’re effectively creating Tags on the fly, but fused with how other PbtA treat dangers in general. There’s not much fundamental difference between “Star-wyrm [Threats: Wings (avoid harm), Plasma-vomit (cook the world), Mighty Thews (shatter mortals), Plutonium Skin (deflect ship-guns)]” and a 16HP dragon with its tags… Except that maybe Threats imply much more in the way of fictional action, and GM Moves. Hmmm. Honestly, looking at it this way it’s almost like UW Threats are a delicious smoothie of blended up Tags, GM Moves, Special Abilities and the like!
I hadn’t ever thought of them quite like that before, but maybe that’s something to think more about, hm.
Upon further reflection, I do feel it’s possible to sub-divide threats too much. Each threat should normally have a couple of agendas. For something as large as a Star-Dragon, I would suggest divvying it up like a space ship:
– Head (Agenda: Bite, breathe fire, swallow whole)
– Body (Agenda: Claw, crush, take flight, deflect harm, guard heart)
– Tail (Agenda: Sweep away, constrict, bowl over)
– Heart (Agenda: Keep the dragon alive).
The key, here, is to provide each threat with different options, different “modes” and different ways to fight said Threat. It’s essential that the characters have a way to mitigate, annul, avoid or otherwise overcome each Threat. “Great Strength” isn’t a standard Threat, it’s not something really physical that can be isolated and attacked, but rather a component of the greater physical form.
So Vader’s force use and swordsmanship would be a single Threat in my mind, something that surrounds him, and has a variety of modes, defenses and (most importantly) ways to tackle it.
Darth Vader (Agenda: Bring order to the galaxy, obey the Emperor, protect the Empire, kill Rebels (Corrupt son))
Force Sense (Agenda: Detect life, detect Force, sense change in fate)
Dark Side Training (Agenda: Cause fear, anger, pain and suffering, protect Vader, deflect lasers, deflect melee attacks, overcome lesser opponents)
In this case, Luke must first overcome Vader’s Dark Side Training before he can attack Vader the person. But… sometimes he can “attack” Vader by approaching at an angle that the Dark Side doesn’t cover; through emotion.
I dig it! Hm. I get the feeling that complex Threat building is definitely a learned skill, and a topic worth exploring more in an effort to make it transparent for player-use.
Chris Wilson’s right, this post is “16 HP Dragon” (a classic of good PbtA advice) by way of Star Wars, and I LOVE it.
I’m really glad folks are enjoying this post!
I just want to confess that I’ve quoted you over in /r/dungeonworld in an effort to get some discussion started there about using this line of thinking in Dungeon World directly. https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonWorld/comments/3zmfy7/cribbing_an_idea_from_uncharted_worlds/
Oh man! I’m steeling myself to hear how the Internet disagrees with me 😉 But seriously, that’s super cool!
Oh my god, I think you’ve solved the one problem I’ve had with PbtA games. I’ve never really known how one would handle a fight with a single master combatant in any *world game and now I do.
I’m really glad something I said made sense! I feel you, though… It’s really easy for players to “gang up” on one baddy in PbtA games, and no amount of giving them hardcore moves or special qualities will necessarily stop that. I’m going to try and focus on this “threatening for multiple reasons” line of thought in the future for my Vaders and Boba Fett style NPCs, see how it works in practice.
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