Rounding It
Out
The usual character gimmicks of equipment, wealth,
contacts, and so on are really relegated to color or otherwise subsumed by the
chosen descriptors for the character. If it makes sense for a Dashing Duelist
to have a sword, he has a sword. When these sorts of judgment calls are made
during game time, you may wish to write them down so the decision remains
consistent as things progress.
Looking at What You.ve
Got
Ultimately, the ratings in the descriptors are the
tools with which the character assails the game world. The specific mechanics
will be covered more in later chapters. However, it is useful to keep, at the
least, the following in mind:
1. You.ll probably get more mileage out of a more
.balanced.
pair (3 and 4) than a .spiked. pair (1 and 6). This is to some extent
common sense, as it.s a form of the .all eggs, one basket. principle. All the
same, the potency gained by having a 2-and-5 character can really pay off when
the chips are down.
2. You.ll probably want to define your descriptors
broadly
enough that you.ll be able to cover a number of actions with them, but
narrowly
enough that you don.t end up stepping on the toes of other players. shticks.
Regardless, enough focus should be there that the term chosen has some amount
of evocativeness to it and easily implies its scope of
action.
3. If you.re called upon to do something that is not
clearly covered by one of your descriptors, you.ll end up limited by whatever
your lowest rating is. See what I meant about eggs and baskets?
3: Characters in
Action
You.re Good At
What You Do
It.s an important thing to remember. Your character
is
good at what he does. What he does is indicated by his descriptors. So it
would
follow that, all things being equal, if your character is doing something
covered by a descriptor, he should succeed, right? In Pace, he does. Here.s how it works. Your character is
called
upon to do something, or you say you want to try something and the GM gives
you
the go-ahead. You pick a descriptor, and explain how it applies. If that makes
sense to the folks involved (usually you and the GM), then it.s what we call
the .active descriptor. for the moment.
And
then, you succeed using your active descriptor.
It.s a pretty basic success, and is basically a .1.
in terms of giving it a number (.one success.). You can increase that number,
and thus the degree to which you succeed, by up to the rating of your
descriptor (if you have a 3 rating, you can increase your success by 3 to a
total of 4). This costs you one .pip. per point (we.ll talk more about pips
later on).
Example: Basic Success
Mechanics
Roderigo, our Dashing[3] Duelist[4], is on a balcony
and fighting for his life. He.s outnumbered, and decides it is time to make an
escape. He says he wants to leap over the balcony and land on the awning of a
shop below, and that this is the sort of thing a Dashing fellow like himself
would do. The GM agrees. Roderigo wants
his landing to go as smoothly as possible, so he decides to spend some pips on
his success. He.s already got a basic success of 1, since his descriptor of
Dashing applies. He can spend up to three pips to take that up to a 4, which
is
his limit since that.s his Dashing rating. He spends the two, and executes the
maneuver with a Dashing display of dynamic
derring-do.
If no descriptor applies, then the character fails
(a
zero). This can still be bought up to a success, however, but it cannot be
bought up any higher than the lowest rated descriptor your character
has.
Example: No Descriptor
Applies
Roderigo companion, Emile, has sprained her ankle
during an ill-advised attempt to duplicate Roderigo awning acrobatics.
Roderigo
wants to set Emile.s ankle so she doesn.t make it worse, and so they can keep
on the move. He tries to make the case that as a Duelist he knows some first
aid, but the GM isn.t buying it. No descriptor applies, so at the get-go,
Roderigo fails. He still has a few pips he can spend, however, but can only
spare one for this task. He buys his zero up to a one for a basic success, and
binds Exiles ankle enough for her to stand, but not enough for her to walk all
that quickly.
What a Success
Means
Degrees of success should be handled fluidly and
quickly. As such, I am not providing a .table. that tells you what each level
of success translates to. Suffice it to say, a single success (a .1.) is just
a
basic, no-frills success. Each step beyond that adds a bit more flair. Around
2
or 3 you.re looking at someone who.s expert. Beyond that, you.re
getting
into the realm of heroic action.
Example: Awning Acrobatics
Let.s go back to the moment of Roderigo leap for his
life.
If Roderigo had left things at a 1, he.d have leapt and landed on the awning,
but without much grace, and head have to spend some time recovering and
getting
down off of the awning, and so on.
Taking it up to a 3, he.s more liable to land after
a
perfect somersault, and be able to dismount without much difficulty
thereafter.
Since he.s gone that extra distance, to a 4, or if head been able to take his
successes even higher, he can land as described, then bounce off the awning
and
down onto his feet on the ground without so much as a mussed hair on his
well-coiffed head.
Character Against
Character
Inevitably, you will have two characters competing
directly
against one another -- maybe they.re fencing, or in a race, or trying to track
the same quarry. This is referred to as a .contest., and both sides are able
to
spend pips on their actions. In a contest, it is good and proper to compare
the
success each character has bought, and declare the one who has a greater
success to be the winner.
Naturally, if neither character has spent any pips,
it.s
going to be a tie, so deadlocks and draws will happen. Then again, if neither
is spending pips, neither character is really trying to beat the other guy, at
least not yet. Generally, it is up to the person with the higher rating to
declare how many pips they.re investing first. But, if people can do it
quickly
and without slowing down the pace of the game, a back-and-forth expenditure of
one or more pips at a time (up to each character.s maximum total) can heighten
the sense of tension about a contest. In such a case, the current loser can
always call the contest on his turn, after spending pips (but he must still be
the loser to do so).
Example: Roderigo vs.
Draco
Roderigo is facing Draco in a duel. Roderigo using
his Duelist[4] descriptor, and Draco's playing it Vicious[3]. Roderigo starts
out by testing his opponent, declaring he will invest three pips, giving him a
total success of 4.This is Draco.s maximum, and he knows
it. He could take it to 4 as well, and force Roderigo to spend a final one, or
he could save himself (and, unfortunately, Roderigo) a couple pips and spend 2
and then call the contest at 4 vs. 3.Still, it.s possible Roderigo won.t want
to spend that final pip. A draw would certainly be favorable to a loss, even a
minor one, so Draco decides to gamble with it, and spends three pips to take
his
success up to its maximum of 4 (1 + Vicious [3]).Roderigo really wants to
teach
Draco a lesson here, though, so he responds by spending a final pip, getting a
5 vs. Draco.s 4. Both contestants are at their maximum, so the contest is
called and resolved on this result.
Contests should not be taken lightly. Each .test.
among characters should be regarded as a significant moment in the playing of
the story. Contests that represent combat should not break down into
blow-by-blow action; they may, at the most, occupy three or four contests, and
then be done. Much the same is true of things outside of combat as well, but
in
such cases, this mode of play is more .normal., vis á vis how it is
handled in other RPGs. So mainly what I.m saying here is that combat isn.t any
different, in Pace, than things which are not
combat.
Combining
Efforts
Sometimes PCs or NPCs will want to combine their
efforts in order to overcome an obstacle. There are several options for how to
do this. The first method is going by simple numbers (.outnumbering. or
.mobbing.
the opponent). Each character, if acting in the scope of a descriptor, may
contribute the single automatic success to a common result pool, but may not
spend pips. In effect, you count the number of people involved, and that.s how
many successes are gained. This is a popular minion tactic . throw four
guardsmen at the hero, and they.re combining for four successes. The other
tactic involves watching each other.s backs and compensating for weaknesses
while accenting the greatest strength (using .teamwork.). One character is
selected as the .lead. and chooses the descriptor that applies. The rest are
acting in a .support. role. If you are in a support role and may do any of the
following, providing you can describe the actions and events that are taking
place to make it possible:
·
Spend pips to
remove blots (see the next chapter), one pip per blot, on any character
involved in the teamwork effort, other than yourself.
·
Spend pips to
remove failure cards (see the next chapter), paying a number of pips equal to
the number on the card, on any character involved in the teamwork effort,
other
than yourself.
·
Spend a pip to
give the lead access to one of your descriptors. Support characters cannot
spend pips to buy successes for the lead, however. That.s the lead.s job. All
this said, there is a downside . everyone.s blots and failure cards may apply
to the lead.s efforts. The .mutual buy-offs. aspect of a teamwork tactic is
there to counter that. Thus, when characters come together as a team, it has a
tendency to wipe the slate clean . at a cost. Such moments are the only way
that players can effectively .share. their pips.
Margins of
Success
When doing a contest that doesn.t end in a tie,
you.ll
be able to gauge how much the winner won by. This is a margin of success, and
can easily be converted into a narrative result by viewing the margin as a
success-result of its own. That is to say, if you beat someone else by one,
then the margin is .basic., and the consequence inflicted upon the loser is
minor but palpable. A margin of two or three indicates something major is
afoot, and beyond that the loser.s predicament is dire indeed. Again, no hard
and fast guidelines are going to be provided here, because how this plays out
is very much something which should be done to the taste of your play-group.
If
you.re playing a game of armed conflict where life is cheap, then people
probably start dying around a margin of three. If you.re a bunch of martial
arts action heroes out of an anime epic, ultimate defeat may come at a much
higher margin, or may require multiple "losses". Such notions should be spelled out as
clearly
as possible near to the start of a game.
Losing
If a character loses, it is incumbent upon the
character.s
player (or the GM in the case of an NPC) to describe the loss in keeping with
the margin by which he was beaten, and to the satisfaction of the winning
party. A third party should be brought in if the winning party is implacable,
but really, nobody likes a sore winner, so victors are encouraged to play
along
in the spirit of the game.
Example: Draco.s Wound
Roderigo has beaten Draco by a margin of one, which,
luckily for Draco, indicates only a minor consequence. Since this is not a
duel
to the death, Draco declares that Roderigo scores a .first blood. hit to his
shoulder. Roderigo counters that he was trying to
teach
Draco a lesson, and wanted to give him a scar on his cheek for his trouble.
Draco protests that Roderigo success was only a .basic. one, and that
something
like a scar would be a more drastic consequence, as reputation and appearance
play important roles in the story. Roderigo considers and ultimately agrees,
accepting Draco.s shoulder wound as a fair result.
The effects of a loss are not represented
mechanically (unless player-elected and severe . see the next chapter), but if
it suits the tastes of the play-group involved, some house rules may be
introduced to track .wounds. or whatever suits you. When cooking up such house
rules, be careful about applying too much in the form of .penalties.. Pips
should not be stripped from a player as a consequence of loss, either . if
they
lost because they elected not to spend pips and save them instead, those
savings
shouldn.t be challenged.
You may wish to instead consider reducing the rating
of a descriptor by one when a wound is inflicted, or potentially more
potently,
reduce the .zero cost. success level for a character by one for each major
wound received (where one wound would lead to starting at -1 for a
no-descriptor situation, and 0 for descriptors).
Remember, though, that these are options, not core
rules. If you.d rather handle your consequences in a purely narrative fashion,
you should! It.s the default. Players
may choose to lose and, in fact, may choose to lose more drastically than
usual, in exchange for pips. But that.s covered in the next
chapter.
4: Pips
Physical
Representation
Every player and the GM has their own pool of pips
(which may be empty at the start, or not, depending on how things are set up).
This pool should be reasonably visible to the other players and to the GM, so
a
physical representation of the pools is in order. Assuming you.re gaming
around
a table, there should be a bowl on the table that unallocated pips go into.
Players should be seated in such a way that their pool is clearly visible in
front of them. What you choose to represent a pip is really up to you, past
that point. Glass beads are certainly facile, and since they.re difficult to
stack it.s a little easier to tell at a glance how many there are. If the
stacking thing doesn.t bother you, coins are a good option . something to do
with all those pennies you have lying around. Or you could use poker chips.
Foodstuffs such as candies are really not recommended, since some players will
tend to eat their pips rather than spend them on the game. You could also use
dice, if you wanted, since you won.t be using them otherwise in this
game.
Spending Pips
This has already been covered to a great extent in
the prior chapter. In summary, pips are spent to increase the level of success
from its starting point. If an action is covered by a descriptor, it starts at
1, and if not, it starts at zero. 1 and above are considered
successful.
Some GMs may wish to allow the expenditure of pips
for non-descriptor-focused effects, like arranging for minor coincidences to
occur in the storyline, or to invent new facts (.Yeah, I know a guy in that
part of town, let me see if I can track him down and ask him about the
headless
ghost we.ve been hearing about..) so long as the facts don.t step on toes or
run afoul of something already in motion. Further, if your game has characters
with special powers, you may want to assess a starting pip cost to use the
more
potent abilities of those powers. A
Pyromancer might be able to light campfires just fine, but to throw a fireball
it will probably cost a pip just to get started. Using the physical set-up we
talked
about above, spent pips go into the bowl in the middle of the
table.
Getting Pips
Players can acquire pips in a few ways. The primary
means is by choosing to fail . that is to say, by selling off their successes.
You can sell your level of success down as far as -3, gaining one pip for
every
level you drop. Negative-result failures carry consequences with them, though,
in the form of failure cards (see below). This operates more or less like
successes in reverse. Things start with zero as a .basic. failure, and
progress
naturally towards -3 as a .catastrophic. failure. -3 is the practical limit,
granting 4 pips where a descriptor applies, and 3 where no descriptor
applies.
Example: Roderigo.s
Embarrassment
Roderigo is Dashing[3], and
is trying to impress a lady he.s been following around town. He decides he
could use some pips, as his supply is running low, so he goes for a backfire,
deciding that his usual success of 1 should instead be a significant failure .
a -1. He and the GM work out the details, and Roderigo walks away with 2 pips
and a handprint reddening the side of his face.
This should not be allowed to be done
haphazardly. It has to be proper for a determination to
be
made; if the GM wouldn.t be calling on you to pick a descriptor to resolve an
action in the circumstance, you are not allowed to simply decide it.s time to
get your pips all the same. That said, this is usually not a problem in
playgroups where rules are not targeted for abuse. Similarly, the player is
not
allowed to create an .internal conflict. where two or more of his descriptors
are driving him in different directions, and are thus in contest against one
another, allowing one of the descriptors to be sold down to fail against the
other. That.s an abuse. Another means of acquiring pips is as simple reward
from the GM . either to represent good play, an award for achieving a
particular goal, or just for making folks laugh. As a rule, players cannot
give
pips to one another and, furthermore, .lame. player-to-player conflict for the
simple purpose of driving up their mutual pip pools is frowned upon. Good
player-to-player
conflict may be valid, however, so long as it.s given the same kind of
attention and tension as any conflict with an NPC.
Failure Cards
Selling your successes down to a negative number
always has some lingering consequences, manifesting as .failure cards..
Whenever a player takes a negative-number failure, he writes the number on an
index card and hands it to the GM. The GM, in turn, writes a description
(descriptor-like, it should be a single word or hyphenated phrase) and hands
it
back to the player, who must display the card prominently in front of him. As
the game progresses, the failure card.s number reduces the number of successes
produced whenever it seems appropriate for it to apply. If the GM and player
agree the consequence represented by the card has played itself out, the card
may be removed. Other possibilities include deciding that failure cards only
remain in play for a given number of scenes or .invocations., and some GMs may
allow players to buy a failure card off by spending a number of pips equal to
the failure number later on.
Example: Roderigo.s Embarrassment
(Continued)
In the previous example, Roderigo took a significant
failure
of -1. His player hands the GM a card with a -1 on it. The GM writes
.Bad-Reputation.
on it and hands it back. For the rest of the day, the lady.s friends see to it
that Roderigo efforts to be Dashing[3] with the ladies are reduced by one
success.
Using Negative
Descriptors
In some cases, a character may have a negative
descriptor attached to them (not the same as a failure card!). This is the
case
with our Butterfingers Robot from the second chapter. Such descriptors can be
looked at as pip generators, if the GM allows them in her game. Negative
descriptors default to producing a simple failure, a zero result. If the
descriptor is chosen as the active descriptor, then, it automatically grants a
number of pips equal to its rating, and can be sold down from there.
Example: BTR-FNGRZ-3
Our Butterfingers[3] Robot[4] is running from a
troop
of imperial marines. He has managed to pick up a gun but is more than a little
scared of using it. But he.s been pinned down, and it.s time to try. His
player
doesn.t see him getting a successful shot off, and decides that for humor
value, things should go really spectacularly badly. He sells down to a -3
result, and gets a total of 6 pips for his trouble. In the narration that
follows, our poor robot manages to shoot his own leg off (justifying a Failure
Card that reads .One-Legged: -3.). .Oh heavens!. he exclaims, .We.re
doomed!.
On rare occasions, a negative descriptor may be used
for the expenditure of pips if the ultimate effect is a positive one. In the
case of our Butterfingers fella, he might bumble in such a way that knocks a
set of controls that drops a crate on the bad guy. This is entirely
appropriate, but the successes will have to be bought starting from zero, not
one.
Deficit
Spending
Both the players and the GM may go into deficit
spending when using pips. That.s right . you aren.t limited by the number of
pips you have in your pool. As a player, if you have no pips left and you need
to spend a few more, you can put a pip from the bowl into the GM's pool for
each pip you need.
Example: Roderigo.s
Predicament
Roderigo is outnumbered and low on pips. The Count.s
men are advancing, and Roderigo needs to draw on all of his knowledge as a
Duelist[4]
to face them down. He has one pip, and he spends it to bring himself to a
success of 2. Each of the three men will be getting one success apiece and
will
probably be working together in a simple .outnumbering. move, for a total of
three, so he knows it won.t be enough. He needs at least another two! Wincing
at what.s in store for the future, Roderigo puts two pips from the bowl into
the GM.s pool. That adds another two spent pips to his result, for a total
success of four. It's enough for him to
beat the Count.s men back . for now.
Similarly, if the GM is out of pips, he can put pips
into the players. pools. Usually which player the pips should go to is obvious
.
it.s the one who is directly involved in the circumstance where the pips are
being spent. If there.s more than one player involved, though, then in
general,
the pips should go to the one with the lowest total. If tied, the pips should
be split as evenly as possible. In player against player contests, the pips go
to the other player, rather than to the GM. This should not be done in an
abusive fashion, where the players get into contests against one another
solely
to generate pips for later use against the GM. If this is occurring, the GM is
free to rule that the pips gained in such a fashion may only be spent in
player
against player conflict!
Blots
Every time (per contest or other exchange) you
deficit spend . regardless of how many pips you acquire . you also acquire a
blot.
Blots should be represented by something obvious and different from the pip
counters . finger puppet
monsters, for example. When you take on a blot, you put it
on
the table in front of you, next to your pool of pips. You may have more than
one blot at a time.
Whenever you get into a contest and you have blots
on
your character, the opposition may opt to remove blots from you, forcing you
to
fail (without compensation in pips). Each blot removed makes your
failure worse by one (the first one gives you a -1 failure). Since the maximum
failure is -3, only three blots may be removed at a
time.
Example: Roderigo.s
Consequences
Roderigo has had one incident of deficit spending so
far, and as such has acquired one blot. Ahead, the Count.s men are barring a
door. Roderigo declares he.s racing for the door
to
stop them. The GM looks at the blot sitting in front of Roderigo and shakes
her
head. .You.re just too winded from taking on those four men.. She removes the
blot from in front of Roderigo. .You get a -1 failure,. she concludes, and
gives him a failure card that reads .Winded: -1..Roderigo has paid a palpable
price for his earlier actions . but on the other hand, he.s still on his feet,
and those four men aren.t.
Timing and
Contests
Spending pips in a contest isn.t too much of a
problem when both participants have available pips and aren.t going into
deficit spending to cover the circumstances. But what happens when, for
example, a player.s PC and a GM.s NPC go head-to-head, and some deficit
spending occurs? Isn.t one person funding the other.s opposition of him? This
is a very real concern. The solution is to put the pips generated by the
deficit spending in escrow until the contest is resolved (or until the scene
is
resolved, if multiple contests are in store and that suits all involved). By
this, I mean that the pips that are to be owed to the players or the GM are
set
aside into a fund which is then passed on to the appropriate party once the
contest has been resolved.
Example: Roderigo & the Count.s Men, Take
2
Roderigo is facing the Count.s men, as before, and
has gone 2 into deficit spending in order to cover his success of 4. The GM
does not have any pips left either, but doesn.t wish to buy up the Count.s
lackeys successes anyway. Roderigo
holds
the two pips for the GM in escrow until the contest is resolved, which comes
down to his success of 4 vs. theirs of 3, and beats them enough to make his
retreat. He then passes the 2 pips for the GM into the GM.s pool. Roderigo
still has no pips, and the GM now has
2.
The Ebb and Flow of
Pips
Deficit spending introduces an interesting sort of
tidal force to the flow of pips over the course of a game. If both players and
GM start out with few or no pips, then one or both are liable to take actions
early on that end up in failure, in order to boost those pips for themselves,
or will come out strong with a lot of deficit spending, only to find that the
.opposition.
has gotten piled deep in pips and is now turning the tables. This is entirely
intentional, and when it.s working right, it should echo some of the familiar
plotlines of popular fiction.
Example: Now You.ve Made Me
Mad
Roderigo starts an adventure without any pips. Early
on, he runs afoul of the Count and his men, and allows for a number of
failures
in order to build up his supply of pips. The Count and his men continue to
hound Roderigo through several scenes, and Roderigo conserves the pips he
gains
where he can. Finally, Roderigo reaches his breaking point and expresses his
displeasure with the Count.s men at the tip of his sword, spending the pips he
has accumulated over the course of the adventure. He.s gunning for his nemesis
hard, and goes into deficit spending to drive towards his goal. Ultimately,
however, the deficit spending puts a few pips into the GM.s coffers, who uses them to give the Count a successful getaway in the
11th hour. Roderigo has defeated his
enemy, and is .spent. in several senses of the word. His enemy, his resources
depleted, has vanished to return another day.
5: Concerns for the
GM
Players and Their
Pips
Pips are a pretty powerful resource, and the players
usually
have the means to provide themselves with them as needed. Encourage deficit
spending; sure, any healthily paranoid player will look at you with suspicion,
but they should also know that you.ll make a good story for them with those
pips in your hands. Don.t be afraid to
do deficit spending yourself. The mechanic is there so your villains can
succeed where they need to, even if it ends up leaving
the heroes in a stronger position. Do be afraid to
overdo it, though; if you deficit spend often enough to consistently undercut
the players’ expenditures of .real. pips, you.ll probably end up
generating some resentment. If you.re giving players pips outside of a deficit
scenario, be sure you know exactly why . maybe you.re planning on this
adventure being tougher than usual (some guidelines on that below), or maybe
they overcame a challenge particularly handily and should be getting rewarded
for that. My main point being, don.t do it willy-nilly. Pips are story power,
and are best . and most valued . when earned.
Notions of
Advancement
Admittedly, Pace is not a game rife with
possibilities of advancement. The system is simple, thin, and has certain
issues of granularity that could make for problems when trying to give out
.experience.. Characters should gain potency in their
descriptors only very slowly. If you.re the kind of GM that divides her
adventures up into .story arcs. spanning multiple sessions, then it.s at the
conclusion of those arcs that PCs should have the possibility of gaining a
single point of potency. In the
meantime, if you.re looking for something to reward your players with from
session to session, pips are your answer. Keep the awards small all the same;
a
few extra pips in the hand can make a big psychological difference in terms of
whether a player decides to spend or conserve.
Non-Player
Characters
There are three fuzzy categories of NPCs out there,
mainly in terms relative to the PCs.
Lackeys
and mooks will tend to have descriptor ratings that are at least one or two
shy
of the best of the PCs.. At the least, this guarantees that the PCs can fairly
easily outclass them with minor expenditures of pips. These NPCs may also
often
be thinly characterized, with only a single descriptor to their name
(City-Guard[2]). Generally they will come into a scene for a specific purpose,
and if they are called on to do something outside of that purpose, they.ll
likely fail at it, since it.s unlikely their descriptor will cover it, and
spending pips on them is a dubious investment at best. The next category is
made of those who are .PC competitive., often referred to as .named
characters..
Their total descriptor potency is about on par with the PCs. To ensure that
some differences of potential are possible when these NPCs come into contests
with your PCs, you may wish to deliberately seek out a different distribution
of potency in their descriptors.
If you have a lot of .spiked. PCs
(6 and 1, 5 and 2), going for a .balanced. NPC (3 and 4) could be a good
idea. The opposite is true as well. If your PCs are a
mix,
that.s fine . think about which PCs your NPC is liable to come into strongest
conflict with, and make his descriptors a .response. to the PC's.
Then the final category contains those who are .PC
superior.. These are the Big Bads of the adventure, the Boss Monsters at the
end of the level. They.ll cost a lot of pips for the GM to fuel into those
truly titanic terrors, but they.ll also take a lot of pips out of the PCs in
their efforts to take 'em on. They.re liable to get ganged up on fast so the
PCs can combine their successes, so when you.re giving them descriptors (feel
free to go for three), make sure they.re competitive with the combined potency
of any two or three of your PCs (depending on the size of the
group).
For more on how to size your NPCs, read the .Sizing
Your Adventure. section in this chapter.
To Fiat or Not To
Fiat
One of the essential dilemmas for a diceless GM (or
a
rules-light GM) is balancing the player-held sense of fair play and
decision-making
against the need or desire to declare (or mandate) a story event or
circumstance.
This is another place where the pip mechanic can be your friend. Combine it
with the overall concept of the degree of success, and you.ve got a pretty
good
sense of how much it should .cost. you as a GM to declare .so mote it be.. And if you.re going into a deficit to do it, all the
better . your players then get to walk away getting paid for the trouble
you.re
causing them. As a rule, in the interests of fairness, it.s entirely
appropriate to decide that the GM should always pay pips in order to make
anything of significance happen. Or more simply: When in doubt, buy it.
Minor stuff is much like a basic success, costing one or perhaps two pips.
Major circumstances should hover around four.
.Global.
ones start at six.
Example: The Cliffhanger
The group is about approaching their time limit on
gaming for the evening, and the GM still has a pile of ten pips on the table
in
front of him due to a round of runaway deficit spending in the eleventh hour.
He
decides to spend them in order to set up the circumstances for the next
session. "You are summoned before
the king," he says, and drops two pips into the bowl to allow for this
particular fiat. .He demands an explanation for why you attacked the
Count." The players make their explanations, but the
GM responds with, "The King is having none of it," and drops another
two pips into the bowl, to cover his determination of the King's
reaction. "He declares you criminals and has you stripped of your weapons. The curtain closes with
you all being led off to the dungeon in chains pending trial.. This last bit
is
huge, and changes a lot about the story that.s to be told. It affects everyone
fairly completely . it.s a .global. circumstance in that regard, and thus the
final six pips . the ones the players gave him over the course of the big
fight
against the count . go into the bowl.
Sizing Your
Adventure
Constructing an adventure peopled with appropriately
sized threats and challenges should be a fairly easy exercise in Pace,
since you can probably fit everyone.s character sheets on a single index card
(a practice I would recommend for
general GMing convenience).You should start out by doing some simple math.
What.s
the total potency of the party? What.s the average potency of their
descriptors? What.s each character.s highest-rated descriptor? The numbers
that
come out of this can be used as guidelines for creating your NPCs (above).
Further, the thinking that is described in .To Fiat or Not To
Fiat. translates pretty well into a rubric for constructing an adventure. As a
general rule, an adventure built out of as many pips as the players have
potency will be pretty competitive. Consider each .mook. to be a minor
circumstance (costing 1 or 2), each .named. character to be a major
circumstance (costing 4), and the big bad to represent a good 6 to 10 of the
pips by himself. If there are some non-NPC obstacles in the way, those should
be rated as well. If the PCs have to stage an assault on a protected mountain
fortress, that.s a pretty major circumstance, and should cost you four. If you
find you haven.t spent all your pips to construct the adventure, fine; that.s
your starting pool as a GM. Similarly, if you.ve overspent, you.ve done some
deficit spending that should go into the pools of the players . they.ll need
it.
You may also wish to defer some of your deficit spending until certain
elements
come into play.
Say you.ve set up a final showdown at the end of the
adventure. At that point, some additional mooks come into play (4 for 4), as
well as a named sniper that.s going to be hidden in the balcony (4 for 1 named
character), all bought on deficit as the rest of the adventure used up the
usual allocation of pips. When that scene starts, you would hand out the 8
pips
in deficit to the players, to bring your mooks and sniper into play. You can
even take this a step further and simply rate your scenes individually, rather
than on a whole-adventure scale, and simply pay out of your pool (or go into
deficit) whenever a particular scene gets .activated..
Example: Setting Up the
Count
The Count is a villain set up to oppose a party of
three brothers-in-arms, Roderigo, Halifax, and Ulysses. They each have a
potency of 7, for a total of 21, so the GM takes those 21 to do her design. He
decides to take the Count right off the top, detailing him as a
Well-Connected[5] Devious[6] Brute[4], a potency of 15 and well-equipped to
take on any two of the three brothers in a number of realms. The GM charges
herself 8 pips for the Count due to his wide-spread capacity for mayhem. This
leaves 13 pips left to spend. She creates two named henchmen, Rogo and Togo,
who are each about on par with one of the PCs. These cost her four apiece,
taking her down to 5 remaining pips.3 of those pips go into adding a few
lackeys to the mix to send out with Rogo and/or Togo when they go harassing
the
brothers, and the remaining 2 are invested in representing the notion that the
Count has a clever plan in the works that has already gotten past the first
few
stages, putting our heroes on the clock. Looking at this, the GM decides to
reserve spending into deficit just yet, with the idea that if it looks like
more firepower.s going to be needed for the Count, she can cook up a few more
mooks on the spot as play progresses.
Appendix: Pace and Other
Systems
Some of the concepts in Pace can be adapted
pretty easily to other game systems, bringing dicelessness where there.s
dicefulness. Here, I.m going to talk about types most of the time, rather than
specific systems. I figure you.re talented enough to walk the rest of the
distance.
Dice Pools
In essence, this is what Pace really is, in
disguise. If folks were rolling dice equal to the potency of each descriptor
and counting up the .successes. found, you.d get something pretty close to how
things can function dicelessly (though with a somewhat smaller assurance of
getting single success results).As such, it'd be pretty easy to adopt the pips
notion to another system that uses dice pools, simply using the pips to buy
successes.
One issue you may encounter mechanically is that in Pace, your
successes
don.t taper off in frequency towards the top . if someone.s willing to spend
the pips to go there, they go there. If you.re doing
a
die pool, however, the chances of many multiple successes on the same roll
diminish as the probabilities aggregate. If you.re going for a pips style
dicelessness, then, you may want to either charge more for each successive
success
bought, or blunt the effectiveness of higher margins of success relative to
how
the adapted system currently works.
Fudge
Fudge is an interesting beast in the light of
Pace,
if only because it.s already dirt-simple to run it dicelessly . you just don.t
roll the dice, and you.ve got everything already operating at its
center-weighted point. Here, you turn pips into Fudge Points (or vice-versa,
depending on your perspective), and what you are buying is not something based
on the trait, but based on how the dice usually function. That is to say, for
spending no pips, you .rolled. a zero. On a single given .roll., you can buy a
die result right up to +4, or gain pips by selling it down. This means highly
skilled people will be able to gain pips while still succeeding by
consistently
lowballing their results, but that.s not as much of a problem as it might
sound
to be.
Additive
Systems
These are pretty popular these days, thanks to a
certain feat of licensing and marketing. And they.re very easy to adapt,
especially using our Fudge-based guideline from above. Pick a midpoint on the
die roll. Say, a 10 on a d20. That.s what you get for no pips. From there, you
can buy results in steps of 2 (in a d20 based system, bonuses tend to operate
in increments of 2 best . other die types will have other, hopefully obvious,
breakpoints). You are limited to only being able to buy or sell your result to
what could show on the die. It does mean in some cases you.ll be spending far
more pips than you would in the baseline Pace system, but once the
ratio
there becomes apparent, it should be pretty easy to adapt the
concepts.
Roll Under
Systems
Very similar to additive systems, roll under systems
involve your zero-cost being the midpoint of the dice (say, 11 on 3d6), and
you
buying your roll down from that point (again, increments of 2 may work well
here). This means some skills are at the .automatic success. point (those
rated
11+), and others will require an expenditure to succeed at. This .syncs. with
the idea of some of them being .descriptor. tied skills and some of them not,
just on a level of greater detail.
