House Rule: Confidence & storytelling

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Since we really love the mythical setting of ars magica (we play in greater alps tribunal up in the high mountains), in our troupe, we decided to focus more on long-term-story-and-character-building, instead of rules lawering and min-maxing and munchkinism. Besides some parts of the RAW are slowing down gameplay, and are potentially story/campaign-destroying. (e.g.: combat botch kills main characters, twilight lets player pause for the rest of the session or forwever, etc..). Therefore as the SG, I developed our own houserules for empowering both the player's and the SG's interactions. The aim is to enhance gameplay and focus on the "real" aspects of roleplaying. Additionally we are also currently experimenting with the good ol' whimsy cards for further player empowerment. Anyway, I tried to combine some of the modern storytelling mechanisms (taken from FATE Core, Apocalypse World, Numenera and the book "Gamemastering" by Brian Jamison) with the confidence rules of ArM 5e. And here is what I got and what I want to share with you:

Confidence
There is no maximum amount of Confidence points (CP) you can get.
Use 1 Confidence point (CP) to:
• Add +3 to any roll except for long term activities like “learning from vis”. (also after die roll)
• Reroll any simple roll and choose one of the results. (also, several times possible and in combination with CP for +3)
• Avoid a botch (when spellcasting, you can only avoid botch effects but not warping, or check for twilight)
• Avoid a combat defense botch. You don’t receive any botch effects and get a Defense-total of 0+Def (instead of plain 0).
• Declare a story detail. (also, retrospectively). SG can veto.
Gain 1 Confidence point (CP) when:
• Player accepts SG-Intrusion (when SG-Group-Intrusion occurs, then every affected character gets 1 CP)
• Player accepts a botch. You can immediately use the CP to avoid the botch effects.
• Player takes a suboptimal choice, is not min-maxing, or adds an unneeded burden to his character (fall in love).
• Player accepts automatic failure, because of his rights & wrongs or one of his personality traits/flaws (without roll).
• Reward for Achievement of character/group goal.

1. Declare story detail
Sometimes, you want to add a detail that works for your character to advance the current scene. For example, you might use this to narrate a convenient coincidence, like retroactively having the right supplies for a certain job (“Of course I brought that along!”), showing up at a dramatically appropriate moment, or suggesting that you and the NPC you just met have mutual clients in common. You should try to justify it, regarding your character story.

2. SG-Intrusion
SG-intrusion is the main mechanic that the SG uses to inject drama and additional excitement into the game. It’s also a handy tool for resolving issues that affect the PCs but do not involve them. SG-intrusion is a way to facilitate what goes on in the world outside the characters.
• First SG announces that there is a possible intrusion but tells not what it might be.
• If player accepts the intrusion, he earns 1 CP immediately, before intrusion effects take place.
• About 1 Intrusion/hour of gameplay.
Combat Intrusions/Botch Examples
• Foe less hurt, gets stronger, gets free attack, gets advantage, reinforcements arrive, Ally panics and decides to flee, or turns against PCs (steals or betrays, lies, misguide)
Out of Combat Intrusion/Botch Examples
• Automatic failure: the PC accepts to fail in a certain task and takes the consequences.
• Partial Success: success in task with annoying side effect, problem solved for the moment only, PC succeeds in task, but makes it harder for the allies to succeed, PC gets only a part of information the rest stays mystified
• Setback: Personal Item damaged, stolen, lost.
• External factors change: Rain, Snow, Fog, Hail, Avalanche, Rockslide, Flooding
• NPC changes to a “surprise-Foe” or surprising new NPC-motive.
• Bad Luck: floorboard breaks, gust of wind, malfunction, NPC is not here (at home sick), backpack rips
• Unknown complication: an easy task gets more complicated, while lock picking detects a poison needle trap, NPC doesn’t speak the same language, NPC is friend of former foe.
• Upcoming complication/obstacle/scene: to trigger when most interesting, unstable ceiling collapses, burning rope rips, city guards arrive, somebody witnesses the scene and runs away
• Opponent Luck or Skill: foe escapes no chase possible, NPC dodges all attacks surprisingly, PC makes extra attack

3. Accepting botches
A player should not be punished for bad luck, so it is his free choice to receive botch effects or not. When a botch occurs he immediately receives a CP. He can use that CP to avoid the botch effects. In combat, defensive botches are often killing characters, so you can get a Defense Total of 0+Def-Bonus instead of plain 0. (You can pay 1 additional CP to add +3)

4. Suboptimal choices
A player not trying to play in the “most effective way”, but instead focusing on story development & character portrait receives CP. (SG decision)

5. Automatic failure
A player succumbing to his character’s morality or personality (rights & wrongs, personality traits/flaws) will be rewarded with 1 CP. (SG decision).

2

OK, I'll bite, since nobody has commented on this :slight_smile:

I like this. A lot. So much in fact that I'll probably introduce this into the current game I'm running.

My only point of issue is the "Player accepts a botch".
Given the opportunity of avoiding most botch effects and such, I'd be inclined to leave that out. There are plenty of opportunities to gain CP, especially with the additions you suggest. Accepting a botch is somewhat in line with 'accepting bad luck' IMHO and is part of the game. But the use of CPs to mitigate the effects (by using 'effort' or 'sheer will' and whatnot) is very much in line with how I see RP gaming ion general.
I also like the idea of 'declaring a story detail' which is very much in line with the idea of multiple GMs, etc. and fits well with the approach of AM in general.

I'll probably not use SG intrusion too often, since a lot of it is, again, just stuff that happens and will likely only bring it about for important stuff but the general idea is excellent (and could be used to provide CPs to players before important events, if they are low). It is a little like the environment spending a CP to make things difficult :slight_smile:

Marc

3

I'm glad somebody is responding in here, to give me the chance to exchange my ideas on that subject..

Remember that only important story-characters are allowed to have confidence (magi & companions only), so Grogs cannot earn CPs and cannot use them to avoid botch results. Anyway in our saga, we have a grog, who just recently received his first CP, because of wonderful in-character play (as SG I allowed it, because it seemed that this grog will soon be "upgraded" to companion level during the curse of the next sessions..)

We introduced "Player accepts a botch" in our troupe, because I did'nt want the players to be afraid of loosing their main characters, just because they are out of confidence points, when they botch (which happens, when a melee demon directly hits a magus, who botches his defence-roll). The players now have the choice of receiving a botch effect/SG intrusion for a CP or not. That led the players to using their CPs ingame, and to not storing (at least 1 of) them, to be able to avoid that arbitrary botch. In fact, now my players risk much more than before, which is fun for everybody. Besides if you're out of CPs, you can't reroll a low die result either, which is sometimes almost the same as rolling a botch. (and you also wouldn't earn a CP in that situation)

However, we have lot's of important non-stressfull situations during our sessions, when players are rolling a simple die and not a stress die. So they cannot "harvest" CPs, with the ars-typical "awareness- folk-ken or lore-rolls. In fact, since they also cannot roll criticals on simple rolls (btw. we play with HR: linear stress rolls), those CPs are used quite often to boost simple die roll results. The way I play it as SG is, that I simply ask the player after his die result, if he wants to spend an additional CP for further information.. (and they love it..)

What also really works well is Player accepts automatic failure, when playing with infernally induced personality traits/flaws (demonic obsession). If the player succumbs to his temporary infernal trait, he receives his CP (which is almost like RAW). But with our HR you get the CP immediately and not just after a whole season of succumbing, which makes infernal much more tempting... 8)

I also recommend to try out SG-Intrusions, since it's really a nice way of giving the players the option of actively and consciousnessly following the path of your story, while you feed them with CPs or to do what they want to do. It's like asking the players during the session, if they want to continue to play the session in a reactive (accepting the intrusion) or proactive (declining the intrusion) way. Also, I use the various intrusion examples as botch effects.. actually for me it's: intrusion=botch.

What I don't care so much about is the rule of thumb: 1 intrusion/hour of gameplay..

CPs are now like a currency. Players are earning them for "realistic" ingame play (suboptimal choice, automatic failure) and for proceeding the story (SG-Intrusion, character or group goal), and use them to survive in dire straits (avoid botches), to generally take more risks (reroll), and to receive that desirable "extra"-information (add +3), or introduce your own ideas (declare a story detail).

Once again, thanks for the response.

4

I thought about your response again, and looked it up in numenera core rules once again and I chose also to delete the "accepting a botch". Now it seems good enough for me, that players can avoid botches and still have plenty of possibilities for earning CPs.. the corrected rules once again:

Confidence
There is no maximum amount of Confidence points (CP) you can get. Only main story characters (magi, companions) have confidence.

Use 1 Confidence point (CP) to:
• Add +3 to any roll except for long term activities like “learning from vis”. (also after die roll)
• Reroll any simple roll and choose one of the results. (also, several times possible and in combination with CP for +3)
• Avoid a SG-Intrusion/botch: when spellcasting, you can only avoid botch effects but not warping, or check for twilight
• Avoid a combat defense botch. You don’t receive a (free) SG-Intrusion/combat botch effects.
• Declare a story detail. (also, retrospectively). SG can veto.

Gain 1 Confidence point (CP) when:
• Player accepts SG-Intrusion, except when it originated from a botch. (when SG-Group-Intrusion occurs, then every affected character gets 1 CP)
• Player takes a suboptimal choice, is not min-maxing, or adds an unneeded burden to his character (fall in love).
• Player accepts automatic failure regarding his rights & wrongs or one of his personality traits/flaws (without roll).
• Player succumbs/indulges to his infernally induced (often temporary) personality trait. (see "demonic obsession" RoP: I p. 24 and 32 ). He receives the CP immediately (max. 1/season)
• Player achieves a character or group goal.

1. Declare story detail
Sometimes, you want to add a detail that works for your character to advance the current scene. For example, you might use this to narrate a convenient coincidence, like retroactively having the right supplies for a certain job (“Of course I brought that along!”), showing up at a dramatically appropriate moment, or suggesting that you and the NPC you just met have mutual clients in common. You should try to justify it, regarding your character story.

2. SG-Intrusion
SG-intrusion is the main mechanic that the SG uses to inject drama and additional excitement into the game, without rolling a bunch of dice and comparing them with detailed in-game-stats. It’s also a handy tool for resolving issues that affect the PCs but do not involve them (e.g.: the burning rope a character is climbing on rips apart.) SG-intrusion is a way to facilitate what goes on in the world outside the characters. It can be also used as a narrative tool to bring the PCs back on track without heavily railroading them.
• First the SG announces that there is a possible intrusion but tells not what it might be.
• If player accepts the intrusion, he earns 1 CP immediately, before intrusion effects take place.
• If player wants to avoid the intrusion, he has to pay 1 CP.
• About 1 Intrusion/hour of gameplay.

3. Botches
When a botch occurs the SG the task is always a failure and the SG basically gets a "free" SG-Intrusion, but doesn’t award the character a CP for it. The player can avoid the botch effects/SG-Intrusion (but not the failure) by spending 1 CP.
In combat, when a "defensive botch" occurs, the character always has a Defense-total of 0+Def (instead of RAW plain 0). You can also pay additional CP to add +3 to the defense-total. A player should not be punished for bad luck, so if he can spend a CP, he can avoid that botch effect/SG-Intrusion and just fails the task.

Combat Intrusion/Botch Examples
• Foe less hurt, gets stronger, gets free attack, gets advantage, reinforcements arrive, Ally panics and decides to flee, or turns against PCs (steals or betrays, lies, misguide), character receives a min. or maj. flaw.., setback (see below)

Out of Combat Intrusion/Botch Examples
• automatic success: When a player performs a task, he would automatically succeed, the SG can use an SG-Intrusion to make the PC roll for that task against a certain difficulty level.
• Setback: Personal Item damaged, stolen, lost.
• External factors change: Rain, Snow, Fog, Hail, Avalanche, Rockslide, Flooding
• NPC changes to a “surprise-Foe” or surprising new NPC-motive.
• Bad Luck: floorboard breaks, gust of wind, malfunction, NPC is not here (at home sick), backpack rips
• Unknown complication: an easy task gets more complicated, while lock picking detects a poison needle trap, NPC doesn’t speak the same language, NPC is friend of former foe.
• Upcoming complication/obstacle/scene: to trigger when most interesting, unstable ceiling collapses, burning rope rips, city guards arrive, somebody witnesses the scene and runs away
• Opponent Luck or Skill: foe escapes no chase possible, NPC dodges all attacks surprisingly, PC makes extra attack

4. Suboptimal choices
A player not trying to play in the “most effective way”, but instead focusing on story development & character portrait receives a CP. (SG decision)

5. Automatic failure
A player succumbing to his character’s morality or personality (rights & wrongs, personality traits/flaws) or accepting a failure in any other important task for story reasons..will be rewarded with 1 CP. (SG decision)

5

Hello Gambrius,

I like this a lot! I'm going to introduce it to my saga next session :slight_smile:
Only thing I won't use is the ability to cancel a botch. We already use the house rule that you don't roll the defense (it's always a fixed "roll" of 6), which speeds up the game and removes the most deadly results. I like the other types of botches, though, and I'm afraid that if you give the players a way to dodge them they are going extinct.
Anyway, thank you for your ideas!

Matteo.

6

I'm glad that you like it. You can certainly play it that way, but remember only main characters have confidence, so grogs can and do botch frequently. In our saga out of combat botches happen a lot, because players save the cps for combat situations and for important information roles (to get the real important clues)
Last Session one player chose to automatically loose a personality roll (infernally induced personality trait: rape+3 because of a former succubus obsession effect) which led to a really different and unexpected chain of events. Later the covenants barber-surgeon (another pc) decided to investigate the crime scene besides also treating the victim.. without our free cp rule, those situations would not happen quite often..

(We play an infernal plot, otherwise we surely wouldn't play sex and crime stories btw..)

7

I updated the post of 11th of march to the actual version, we are playing. This houserule is a major success in our troupe btw..
I will continue to post other houserules we approved and happily use in this thread..

8

Since I wasn't quite happy with the way ArM5 deals with ability checks, regarding the storytelling potential, I came up with the following houserule.
I don't like the fact, that there are only 3 different possible outcomes. Success - failure - botch. Especially having a failure of an ability roll stopping/stalling the storyflow, is a very "old school" rpg mechanism. Also playing the botch rules as RAW, can totally change the story to tell. Don't get me wrong. I like the grim & gritty and medevial and realistic approach of ArM5 a lot. But I don't like to have random effects in RPGs which potentially can destroy/shape the way the drama, plot, main focus of the session flows, which I as the SG prepared and mentally squeezed out of my brain before, needing severals hours of preparation..

E.g. Character climbs quickly up a tree to have a better position to look out for the marauding skeletonwolves the magus mentioned before.
Player rolls: Dex + Athletics vs. EF 9
Success: SG: Yes, you climb up without a problem.
Failure: SG: No, you can't manage to climb the tree. What do you do? PC: I'll try again.. SG: ok. New attempt then roll the dice..

  • This is boring to play IMHO.
    Botch: SG: Well, while you climb the tree, you slip and fall 6 paces deep on rocky ground receiving +9 damage vs. your soak roll ignoring armor. (Falling +1/ 2 ft *2 hard/2soft surfaces)
  • This is quite tough to play, but certainly realistic. Depending on size and soak, the character has a medium to incapacitating wound, which can totally change the whole ongoing session. Well in the end, the magus would just go back to the covenant and the grog would need at least a season to get active again. But is this a good story to play? For me not quite..

So my way of playing ArM5:

Dice Roll Resolution

  • success: (>EF) SG says yes, and (speed up story-flow in positive way)

  • close failure: (up to -3<EF) SG says yes, but (go on with story-flow, but with fail foward, partial success)

  • great failure: (< -3 EF) SG says no, but (slow down story-flow, but give new clue)

  • botch: (no matter how many botch dice) SG says no, and (speed up story-flow in negativ/dramatic way -> always a failure + free SG-Intrusion BUT player can avoid by paying 1 CP)

  • Automatic failure: PC decides not to roll at all, but to have a great failure because of a personality trait/flaw/personal reasons. Char receives 1 CP, if appropriate.

  • Trivial tasks: if there is no "story gain" for a failed dice roll, we don't roll at all and SG just hands out the information/clue. At this point the SG has the possibility
    to surprise the players by offering a possible SG-Intrusion. If the player/s accept, he receives a CP. We call that to "forfeit automatic success".

Fail Forward - when checks fail
Character still succeeds, but with one of the following side effects:

  • Partial success (success in task with annoying side effect, problem solved for the moment only, PC succeeds in task, but makes it harder for the allies to succeed, PC gets only a part of information the rest stays mystified)
  • Succeed at a cost (fatigue, wound, confidence, warping)
  • Game complication (loose item/contact/agent, temporary malus or temp.flaw)
  • Story complication (new obstacle or foe, lost time, PC story hooks?)
  • Raise the stakes (consequences for future failures are even worse)
  • Charge for success (fail unless PCs pays something silver, vis, item, reputation for it)

SG-Intrusion
See in thread above for examples.

[size=150]„Nothing" is not a reaction to failure[/size]