I have a question(s) for you fine people.
Do your AW players tend to try to be good friends all the time and always avoid stepping on other character’s toes?
I’ve run a decent number of AW games now and it seems like unless I force it, the characters never consider crossing another character.
I ask because I feel like there never is any PC vs PC tension in my games and I know that the potential for some great role playing moments can happen when PC’s are at odds, especially in AW.
Granted I play with the same group of people so it could just be their style, and that’s fine, but I’m wondering if your game has the PC’s at odds more so.
Maybe I’m not doing my set up well enough. All the conflicts are PC vs NPC. As I’m typing this I realize that there is a page or two in the book that states I should be making PC-NPC-PC triangles. How does one do that to make for tension and interesting choices/role playing opportunities?
No, my players fight each other constantly.
PC-NPC triangles, man. If they both care about someone who needs opposite things from each of them, that’s a guaranteed knife fight.
I barely provide fronts of any kind when I run 2-hr con games. It goes like this:
“Ok, who’s in charge?” (Hardholder, Chopper, Hocus)
“Who wishes they were?” (Brainer, Battlebabe, Skinner)
“Who backs #1 up?” (Faceless, Gunlugger, Driver)
“Sorry, the rest of ya, you’re caught in the middle. Good luck.” (Angel, Quarantine, Savvyhead)
For longer running games, yeah, PC-NPC-PC triangles, fer sure. NPCs that are trying to make one of the PCs happy by doing something bad to the other usually works well, as does one who needs a PC to get something from the other.
Did you used to play D&D? That’s D&D syndrome
I use to yes, and I believe all my players use to as well.
Wrapped up my fifth AW campaign on Sunday. This last one was pretty friendly. Betrayal, differing agendas and arguments here and there, but no outright PvP knife fights. All of the ongoing games I’ve played in have had at least some double-crossing. It feels to me like the triangles thing almost guarantees it.
Delos Adamski that’s probably why. I find that D&D heavily discourages party conflict. It’s hard to break out of that mentality.
Also, sometimes players take personally things that happen to their characters so it’s easier just trying to get along than dealing with real life angst.
I know the next game I run, I’m going to establish in session 0 that I’m looking for more PvP
The whole PC-NPC-PC triangle thing is the best. “Hey PC, your buddy Gunter tells you he got word his Gran is dying and he needs to go see her. He tells you to gather your things if you want to go across the burn flats with him. He’ll manage transportation. … Yo, Chopper, Gunter shows up when you’re cleaning your ride. Says he needs it. His gun is out. What do you do?”
That’s a great example. I’d love to hear more.
In our defense, it isn’t because we aren’t interested in PC on PC conflict (although personally? I don’t care for it. Too much like Real Life, thanks. See also drama-for-the-sake-of-drama). It’s because most of the time we have other things in our faces that take priority.
Fucking over the other PCs is something we save until after we deal with the cyberzombies overrunning our home. Screwing the Driver and the Hocus for backing the Hardholder is for after getting the Holder’s cray-cray brat kid off her ass, as far as the Brainer is concerned. Because we don’t have to like each other, but if we don’t deal with That Fucking Dragon first, it won’t matter who got whom.
Henry de Veuve interparty conflict isn’t the same as “fucking over” another PC. The way you write about these things makes me feel like you haven’t done any of this sort of stuff beyond “I backstab the Paladin!”, so I’d recommend you give it a chance to see.
Remember when Jayne tried to get the reward for Simon and River but it went backwards?
My first/only experience running AW, I was not very good about PC-NPC-PC triangles. We definitely had D&D party syndrome going, including me.
Or the time Jayne tried to trade Vera for Mal’s wife (whose name escapes me at the moment)
Or the time Jayne… well does just about anything…
Maybe I need my players to have more concrete goals at session 0.
And like Aaron Griffin said, I’m not looking for backstabbing but just some tension. See some seduction and manipulation and maybe a going aggro every once in a while. Like when Max and Furiosa first met.
It was hard (for me) not to look to AW to serve as a surrogate “Fallout” RPG.
Well the Quarantine is your playbook of choice then.
Delos Adamski Then you need to set up some of those triangular PC/NPC/PC things for us instead of just FRONT! BIG SCARY FRONT! 🙂
Yeah that’s definitely where I’ve been failing as MC. Next game.
I find that a lot of this comes from the idea of thinking of the GM as an opponent. Players don’t really want to create their own adversity if the GM is gonna do it anyway. When was the last time a player said “Oh I said I was drinking earlier, so I’ll take a -2 to my roll for being drunk”.
If the players understand the GM is basically another player who has a weird playbook titled “Everything Else”, then people tend to screw with each other a bit more.
Oh I’d love to see that playbook.
Aaron Griffin Yeah, that’s me being brief and overbroad. We do indeed have intra-PC conflict and tension that doesn’t rise to the level of “backstab the paladin!”. Just not as much as Delos wants, and it’s usually kept lower key because we have Other Problems in our face.
Delos Adamski Not at all failing as an MC! You have been very good at keeping our characters’ lives interesting, full of excitement, and provided many opportunities to show off our neat powers and kickass moves. We just don’t tend to end up with triangles as often and get distracted from the ones we have.
My players aren’t especially interested in PvP, so I don’t force it. I do have NPCs with conflicting agendas going to different PCs for mutually exclusive demands and favors, which creates some conflict, but that usually gets resolved through some kind of group problem-solving. (Dremmer wants you to kill Jackal but Bishop is paying me to protect him? Ugh. How do we get out of this mess? Well….)
I don’t know. My guys have always been at odds with each other.
One session was a three hour run-and-gun of one player by three others, who all wanted what he had. It was a mess. The player didn’t want to let his guy die. He took every scar and kept trying to get away completely. The other players stalked him across the wastes and eventually left him dead in the sand.
It was awesome, cinematic, and completely heart-breaking when the player was left with no other option but to give up and let his character die.
Keep in mind that PvP conflict doesn’t have to mean fighting. In my experience, it’s been rare for the players to actually attack each other, but very common for them to pursue conflicting interests and mess with each other’s plans.
My favorite example is when the group had picked up some runaway children that a bandit queen wanted back, Fury Road-style. The Maestro’d tried to negotiate with the bandit queen like “sure we’ll turn over the kids, just don’t hurt us, also I totally have the hots for you” while the Angel hid the kids in her infirmary and was like “these kids had every reason for running away, now they’re under my protection, if you so much as touch them I will end you.”
As an MC, one of my favorite tricks is to make a threat to one PC an opportunity for another, especially if that threat/opportunity can be crystallized as a specific NPC.
If you’re playing an ongoing campaign, usually someone will have a gang or people they are responsible for. People do dumb things and get into trouble, particularly in an apocalyptic setting where people always need stuff and want what they don’t have.
In other games, especially teen ones, the best way to get conflict is to have PCs want other PCs to be different people.
In *AW, it’s easier to give 2 steaks for 3 people. Ask leading questions: Bob, why do you deserve that steak? Dave, when was the last time Bob didn’t come through on a promise? Riv, you can probably get both steaks, which means you have one in case the dingos come back…
We use modified PvP moves in our PbtA hack. When you have a hammer you will find nails.
Wynand Louw “When you have a hammer you will find nails.” I love that.
All solid advice upthread. As an MC, the gold of PC-[NPC]-PC triangles is key, especially when backed up by Sebastian Baker’s insight about making the [NPC]a problem for one PC and an opportunity for another and Mark DiPasquale’s solid set-up of PC tension at the start. Further, if my players actually hit hard on the PvP, it becomes a harder game to run because I’m not clocking the fronts since the primary front of focus becomes the other PC.