The John Doe Era: a group story building idea

I came up with an idea the other day for a Savage World game, and thought it could be used in several other games as well.

Savage Worlds has this mechanic that happens during down times(like if the group is camping for the night, or staying in a motel between cities, etc) where you invoke an "Interlude".  In the Interlude, a character is given a chance to expand their character's story and personal life out of the context of the game.  A trend that started in the Happy Jack's podcast circle of friends was that the GM would get an Interlude out of someone without them realizing they were Interluded.  Speaking from experience, it is hard to get an Interlude going without people realizing, and without that, the Interlude can feel artificial and out of place at times.

My ideas lead to me doing directed and cooperative Interludes.  I would pick something that happened in the last session and ask the player to talk about it with the group in character.  Maybe the character had questions about why someone did this or that, or why someone could not do this or that, this leads to some pretty good discussions.

The new idea, though, is something I feel is one of the best I've come up with in a while.  When explaining it, I used the name John Doe, so that's why its called the John Doe era.  I was watching The Walking Dead the other week, and in it the group skips ahead about 9 months.  You are not specifically told what happened in those 9 months aside from the fact that the group because more like a family to each other, and a whole lot of surviving happened.

I thought to myself "what if I skipped ahead a certain amount of time, and told my players that someone had joined the group and now is not a part of the group anymore".  This was the era of John.  At the interludes I would ask the person something about that time.  "its nights like this that remind of why you liked John, maybe you want to tell the group a good memory"  or "one time you saved John's life, why did you never tell the group, and what happened that day?" and after the character of John is built, I pull out the big one, "why is John not with the group any longer".  It is completely up to the players to build this character that they never played with.  It is up to the players to give him personality without the GM judging or coercing.  John could be good, he could be an asshole, he could have left over a disagreement, he could have been killed, its up to the group.

Its collaborative story telling that is out of the hands of the GM, and a lull in the action, during an Interlude or another such time in other games would be a perfect time to let the GM have a break, and to let the group control things a bit.

FATE Points vs Bennies

On the surface of things, Fate's "Fate Point" and Savage World's "Benny" systems look similar, but if you take a moment to learn about them you will see that they serve different purposes.

What is a Benny?

In Savage Worlds you can be awarded a Benny by the GM(or by other players in some alternate rules).  This makes Benny rules kind of liquid, as you simply get them when someone judges what you do merits it.  This makes them flexible.  If the GM wants more action, he'll reward the players for being more proactive in things.  If the GM wants clever resolutions to problems, he'll start rewarding that.  It is kind of like Dog Treats.  

Some people do not like this non-codified giving of bennies because someone can become a "favorite", or you can encourage bad behavior.  Someone making an offhand joke about a situation makes everyone laugh wildly for 5 minutes, so they get a benny.  Now for the next 30 minutes, everyone's cracking jokes trying to get the next "you're the funniest person" benny.  This does not even take into account straight up favortism from a bad GM.

In the end, Bennies are not nearly as strong as Fate Points.  Bennies are "do overs".  They let you re-roll an action that you are not happy with.  If you're trying to diffuse a bomb, its a second chance at a better shot.  If you get hit by a bullet, that benny can be a split second dodge out of the way.  If you're injured and bleeding, that benny can be a shot of adrenaline that pushes you off the floor and into heroism.  Bennies are more plentiful and fly around in use much more than Fate Points.  They create tension and extreme acts of heroics that cause Savage Worlds games to be more "seat of the pants" style than other games.

What is a Fate Point?

Fate Points are earned by a player putting their character through hardship.  To get a Fate Point you have to invoke a negative aspect of your character, and fail at some task or ability. The favored way of getting Fate Points is to spring the failure only after you build up your idea as awesome and great to the group.

Fate Point acquisition is a sort of anti-min/max thing built into the game.  It forces you to think of real disadvantages of your character that you can call on in situations so you can get these Fate Points.  If you choose a disadvantage that rarely comes up(pineapple allergy), then you're going to find it hard to come by Fate Points.  Fate Points are not in the hands of a GM, and so there is not the potential for abuse as there is with Bennies.

Fate Points are sort of your "dream powers" if you go by the idea that Fate is sort of a group of lucid dreamers trying to make a story together.  You can use them for mundane things like adding +'s to your roles or -'s to other's rolls, but the real power is when you take narrative control of a situation.  You can find clues, you can know contacts, you can create "bridges" between the players and the goals that make it more interesting or move the story along.  You find out the bad guy's fortress is  hidden, you can use a Fate point to know a former guard is in prison and the group can go interrogate him for the location.  You get into a car that won't start, spend a Fate Point to do the "start up" routine your shitty car in college did and it causes the car to work!  Stuff like that.

On the flip side you can also change it to the detriment of other characters.  The bandits are on top of the train, so you spend a Fate Point to say "a storm rolls up out of the plains, causing heavy wind and rain" now the bandits have trouble moving while up there.  The Non-player character in the corner of a gas station is actually an undercover cop, and joins the group in subduing the criminals.  It can be simple too, spend a Fate Point to make a gun jam.  

End.

So that's the differences.  There are some more, but this is enough of an explanation to get you started.  Bennies are more free for the awarding, but are more rule tied to their usage.  Fate Points are very codified in how you attain them, but the use of them is very free form.  Both are really cool additions to the old gaming formula, and even though I'm pretty much the GM of games I play, I love anything that takes control away from me, and gives the players the ability to affect the world.

Initial Thoughts: FATE Accelerated

FATE Accelerated is a newer version of FATE, which in itself is a variation of FUDGE.  You don't have to know the difference or the history... though I might do a history piece of on it one day; gotta have that blog fodder, you know?

Evil Hat Productions are old hat at doing genre specific versions of Fate.  Their releases garner almost universal acclaim and they have even got awarded top honors a few times for new RPG.  I initially was very skeptical of these honors, because I had a prejudice against Fate.  I wondered if what amounted to "setting" or "campaign" books should be considered different games altogether.  I still haven't shaken that thought, but it might be due to my ignorance of the system.  Lately they have gotten away from Genre or licensed property games and have been trying to produce universal "works for everything" systems.

So I came across this dilemma.  I love 3x D&D and I love Savage Worlds, but if I was ever going to make a Harry Potter Universe game for my girlfriend, it would require SOOO much work and research into the spells.  Then, at the end of the day, the game would not feel like Harry Potter because they don't care about how many times you can cast a spell, or knowing specifically the distances and all that.  The game SYSTEM would care, but the characters should not.  Then I read about Fate Accelerated's stat system.

Fate Accelerated was a Kickstarter project.  They have the PDF for free on the website.  Really, its there, all legal and everything, go grab it and have yourself a read(link at the bottom if I remember to put it there).  It was designed to be a quick version of Fate so that you and your friends could just decide to play, and get characters and a world going in less than 20 minutes.  This "group together" thing is emphasized by the fact that its almost impossible to finish a character without the group's input into relationships and stuff.  The game is geared to make NEW stories right when you all sit down.  This is not a game for those that like to create self contained characters and GM's that like to create a novel for the group to play through, this is not that kind of game.(the GM could easily keep a list of settings and even scenes though)

Fate's stat system is a system of "approaches" instead of physical/mental attributes.  They describe how your character approaches a problem or situation.  Instead of muscle and wisdom, your approaches are: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, Sneaky.  That's your stats and basically your "skills" all in one go.  In my example, you do not make a huge list of spells you know; you simply say "I use my exspeloramus(spelling, I know) spell to cleverly knock the wand from their hand".  The GM can argue that's force, but in the end the group settles the discussion and there ya go.

You do get some stunts, but they just augment your abilities instead of being something you'd use as a spell list.  Again, taking Potter, you might list "Petronus materialization" which means that when you cast your expecto Patronus spell, instead of being a cone of force(like Early Prisoner of Azkarban), you summon the spirit creature(like in Order of Phoenix), giving you a +2 to things it would help with.  Harry might also have that summon spell that, but his stunt is that he can call his broom from insanely long distances.  You get the picture... I hope.

The Fate points and how the game works is really neat too.  It gives the players a bit of "GM'ing" ability while playing, so that they can create their own parts of the story.  They can create problems so that they can get Fate points, or they can create advantageous conditions to help during a challenge.  Someone can just say "its raining" and there it is, raining.  Someone can say "I check under the doormat and find the key" instead of going through what the GM planned.  That might scare some GM's, but its not quite that easy to alter the world, you'll have to learn the system to find out.

My girlfriend said its like playing a dream where all the players are lucid dreamers.  Since I'm a lucid dreamer, I think this analogy fits really well.

I'll do some more Fate related posts later.  I want to talk about the differences between Bennies and Fate Points, and I might give some better examples on how the players create the world.

Fate Accelerated Official site

Mulligans, Bennies, and Do-Overs.

I'm about to get hardcore golfer lingo all up in here, so try and follow if you can.  Mulligan... means "do-over".

Re-rolling was the most audacious of moves when I was a teenager.  You don't even ask for that, you might get laughed out of the room or hit with a mountain dew can(actually we had high powered Ginseng pills from GMC).  Even back then though, I was a "relax, go with the flow and trust your GM" kind of GM.  Random failures were not going to be a death sentence(unless it was dramatic, but I tried to convey those situations to build drama), and most of the time failures ended in awesomely funny stories.  Many failures are still part of our "remember the good old days" conversations among my long time friends.

Then I found Savage Worlds.  I first read about Bennies and though "nevermind, screw this", but then I kept reading.  Savage Worlds flies off the handle very easy.  Their dice "explode" or "Ace", which means if you roll the highest number on a dice, you can re-roll that dice and add the result.  Randomly you could get 3 aces in a row and do insane amounts of damage.  Bennies figure into that, if things just swing wildly out of proportion, you have some "do overs" you can play.

The do over was built INTO the system, not tacked on.  That is an IMPORTANT aspect.

Tagging on do-overs in a game makes the game heavily favored on the players.  I would never do that to Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder because it would stack things in favor of the players an obscenely strong amount... and besides, D&D with do-overs just "feels" all icky.

I know D&D Next is still in testing, but the head guy there has revealed they are completely aping every popular thing in modern gaming to try and save their sinking ship.  This includes "Inspiration" which is really just another name for Bennies.  I'm hoping they do not make this into the game itself, because frankly with "Wild Dice" already figured in from the start, adding Bennies just makes it feel like a Savage Worlds home brew.


Bennies are not the sole providence of Savage Worlds though.  I do not believe the D&D Next designers said "Savage World's bennies are huge, let's do that".  The "new new Hotness" is FATE.  It is blowing up the kickstarters.  FATE's mulligans are slightly different and must be tied to role play aspects of your character.  While FATE and Savage Worlds was first published the same year, the precursor to Savage Worlds, the game known as Deadlands, had Bennies way back in 1996.

A lot of the games based on FATE have them and have gotten tons of awards.  The Dresden Files game is based on FATE directly.  BULLDOGs is another.  FATE kickstarters are blowing up all over the place with FATECORE being the sort of "everything" FATE book getting lots of funding.

The big winner of the awards this year was Marvel Super Heroic Role Playing Game.  It had bennies built into it too, and were much more like FATE than anything else, but it had its own quirks and intricacies.

All this, and so why am I feeling kind of icky about D&D Next getting it?  Well... its the old man trying to be young when we love the old man thing all over again.  Examples.  Hulk Hogan decided to become an anti-hero because Stone Cold Steve Austin was tearing it up in ratings.  Final Fantasy goes for action combo combat, open world free form questing, and MMORPG like crafting... when the best Final Fantasy games sell and are praised for being innovative, not being a follower, being... Final Fantasy.  Lost Odyssey was made to be a Final Fantasy and stuck with traditional gameplay, and its widely regarded as the best JRPG of its generation, while FF13 is lambasted(despite the fact I loved it).

D&D needs to be D&D again.  A game that feels like an evolution of 1st-3rd.  Maybe take a couple of good parts of 4, and bring some new stuff for 5, but make it feel like D&D again.  1st-3rd got a lot of things right, you do not need to reinvent the wheel.