My Saturday Magic World game continues in all its eldritch glory, but the campaign is taking a darker turn as the group at last has met the liche Aruman, and instead of taking the guy out (which the two lone human barbarian types in the group would like to do) everyone is instead bartering with him, offering to work for the liche in exchange for magical training. This is not unexpected, as there are six opportunistic spell-casters (or wannabe casters) in this group. It demonstrates a fundamental divide between D&D style storytelling and other types of fantasy RPGs....in Magic World, as with other BRP/Runequest systems you gain power, spells and skill through experience and training. As a result, it's important as the GM to account for the fact that players will need time in the campaign for their PCs to find growth opportunities. Now, the idea that they will happily aid the local evil liche in exchange for power is a clear sign that my campaign is rapidly moving toward an "all shadow, all the time" sort of campaign, but hey, that's okay....it seems to be what the players want.
What's interesting of course, is that D&D games will never, RAW, offer the players a direct incentive to negotiate a working relationsghip with the evil wizard in this manner, because D&D's leveling process has been largely divorced from its environment (at least since 1E, which had training costs, but not much else). Now yes, you could probably have the lich (for there is no e in the D&D analog) offer up spell scrolls in exchange for deeds, sure....but the PCs still gain more by just killing the lich, taking the scrolls and gaining the XP. In Magic World, killing the lich kills the mentor, and he's the one you need to train you...
Anyway, this did get me to thinking a bit about how the need to advance being an integral part of your course of action in a BRP/MW style game can have a decidedly significant impact on player character behavior, one which is rarely seen in D&D.
This is a great post. Short and extremely thoughtful. I hadn't thought of it that way, but I agree that this is not something you see a lot of in D&D.
ReplyDeleteThen again, level-less games tend to create these scenarios... Nice one
Agreed and one of the main reasons I like classless based systems than the d20 one.
DeleteI had the same thing happen in an old Elric/Stormbringer based game, where the players decided to cut a deal with the evil villain of the campaign so that they could learn skills from his devoted priest and sorcerer, as well as learning to fight better from the villain himself. At one point I simply asked the players if they realized they had become the "bad" guys when they started doing missions in return for training. Their response: "Once we have the skills and power to defeat this guy, he is going down. But right now, there is so much more to learn from them..."
ReplyDeleteIt certainly made the campaign go from sunlight to the moral shadows very quickly.
I see what you're saying and it seems like the rules do support that difference (though I think MW's phrasing downplays the utility of training)..... but in my experiences of playing D&D (in its various guises) liches and such get bargained with quite a lot as well.
ReplyDeleteA pattern I've noticed is to have some quest come up against an insurmountable obstacle... and then have a powerful villain (such as a liche) show up to offer aid in exchange for some price. Sure, someone (usually a Cleric) wants to kill the thing on sight... but fighters and rogues will tend to bargain with them... for secrets regarding the location of ancient treasure, for bits of (usually cursed) gear... or just an easier way out of the situation that got them there.
Death Frost Doom has this sort of 'between a rock and a hard place' built right in.
Maybe it's just because I tend not to play with folks who obsess over XP and character advancement.
I think there's a more subtle dynamic going on here, based on the encounter structure of 3rd and 4th edition....because what you're describing is typical of the sort of exchanges adventurers might have had with big bad liches and dragons back in my 2E days. The reason I single 3rd and 4th edition out was because both editions placed a great deal of emphasis on balancing encounters out....the idea being that DMs who designed encounters by the RAW would inevitably present a lich to players who were prepared to (or theoretically, anyway) defeat the lich. The mindset of both editions pretty much insured that the idea of a clever negotiation was off the table because the use of brute force was the easier and pretty much baked-in reward. 2E, by contrast, was the last edition (prior to 5E which does this even in the Starter Set) to have no problem with low level characters encounter high level monsters that need to be reasoned with to escape or defeat. I say 5E because it includes a green dragon right in the starter set that's pretty much guaranteed to waste the party at almost any level (and it already has in my Saturday group, which fled in every direction when the dragon shrugged off their attacks and ate the wizard in one strike). The idea of encounters you can't defeat is something players exclusively used to the encounter design of 3rd and 4th edition (4E especially!) will find very confusing....and harkens back to the entitlement issue that was referenced in a prior post.
DeleteYes, that all makes sense. Though I've never played 2e the GMs I played under for 3e and Pathfinder were determined to present a 'sandbox' style of play... so those sorts of unbeatable foes were always on the table for us to run into.
Delete"The reason I single 3rd and 4th edition out was because both editions placed a great deal of emphasis on balancing encounters out....the idea being that DMs who designed encounters by the RAW would inevitably present a lich to players who were prepared to (or theoretically, anyway) defeat the lich."
DeleteThis, doubly. I find that it is difficult to 'balance' BRP encounters anyway, and death or defeat can come so quickly in any case, that aside from things like training, negotiation is the order of the day (for both sides). At least until one side has weighed up the other and likes the odds, or returns with a tactical advantage.
I dumped out XP for killing and looting in my own game, but mostly because I dislike math. Your post really gives me something about though.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside (but related to the costs of training in Magic World) - I find the 'price list' in Magic World to be all over the shop (no pun intended). Some of this is an error in reproducing the tables from Elric! (I think the falchion ends up crazily expensive weapon because the entries are out of alignment), but in other cases items just don't seem to belong in the same 'economy'. This might seem like a petty concern, but for an ongoing campaign having a reasonably coherent price list is important. As it stands I have ended up using the MRQII equipment book wholesale in my Magic World games. What do you do, if anything?
ReplyDeleteThe falchion did seem overpriced although I didn't know the source of the typo (until now). I solved it by just correcting the price to 150 bronzes instead. No one in my group is an economist or even close to it, so there hasn't been any issue raised with the general purpose pricing outside of a couple oddities like the falchion. Right now the game itself is very enjoyable, and the flaws in the book are not interferring with the game play; I ran a MRQ1 campaign years ago that effectively shut down because of the gameplay problems from poorly conceived rules; MW's only issue is a matter of polish....a 2nd edition with a good scrubbing is all it needs.
DeleteI agree about the polish - I want MW run though the RQ6 graphic design process! Well, that or the old Chaosium process that produced the Elric!/Stormbringer etc books.
DeleteAfter playing a short campaign of MW I put my thoughts here: http://drbargle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/some-thoughts-on-magic-world.html