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So, last Saturday I rewatched Ladyehawk, and was remninded how well the conflict scenes were choreographed and planed in that film. In Particular, both the Vineyard and the Chapel sequences kinda stand out to me.
One of the things that gets me about most, if not all RPG games, is how conflict is handled as a life-death symbiosis. Players at this point are trained to think of conflicts as fights, and that winning means that you have killed the opposition, or that you were killed by them. This is a problem I am struggling to find a way to so9lve mentally.
The vineyard scene is a scene of complete defeat for a hero. Phillip comes in and starts bragging about his escape, and runs into the Church Guard. He makes a nimble dash away from a guard (Oh, look. Many systems would allow a free attack here), and quickly hides in the crowd. That tack doesn't work, though, and he ends up dashing and darting, and trying to get away. Eventually he is cornered and he loses. In his final moment, he is about to be killed for an accident with Miquet, when Nevair show up.
The remarkable thing about this sequence is that in theory, it should be doable in a RPG game, but the rules get in the way, from storyteller to even Houses of the Blooded. Not that they don't try, but even if players get to define their own failure, the kind of fluidity you get in these kinds of action sequences are not easy to achieve without direction, and players tend to be a very undirected bunch looking for the quick solutions, from my experience.
I at one point tried to plot out a system that I called Predator/Prey. The goal was that there was a scene number, and all characters divided themselves into Predator or Prey relationships. The goal of any conflict scene was for the Prey to get away, and the Predators to stop that. It didn't necessarily end in a death, but defeat was still possible
I'm still not sure if I was right with that model. I think it's a really alien concept to players that they *want* to get away, that they don't want to be confrontational with their action hero characters. It's 40 years of "I kill X, I loot Y, I kick open door z". The idea that your character most likely is not the one with the sword or crossbow drawn, standing over a pile of dead bodies, but are the people on horseback, leaving a bunch of mooks in the dust as you ride off in pursuit of the prize is a very foreign one.
I have no idea how to create this kind of behavior, and reward it well. I need to think about it some more.
One of the things that gets me about most, if not all RPG games, is how conflict is handled as a life-death symbiosis. Players at this point are trained to think of conflicts as fights, and that winning means that you have killed the opposition, or that you were killed by them. This is a problem I am struggling to find a way to so9lve mentally.
The vineyard scene is a scene of complete defeat for a hero. Phillip comes in and starts bragging about his escape, and runs into the Church Guard. He makes a nimble dash away from a guard (Oh, look. Many systems would allow a free attack here), and quickly hides in the crowd. That tack doesn't work, though, and he ends up dashing and darting, and trying to get away. Eventually he is cornered and he loses. In his final moment, he is about to be killed for an accident with Miquet, when Nevair show up.
The remarkable thing about this sequence is that in theory, it should be doable in a RPG game, but the rules get in the way, from storyteller to even Houses of the Blooded. Not that they don't try, but even if players get to define their own failure, the kind of fluidity you get in these kinds of action sequences are not easy to achieve without direction, and players tend to be a very undirected bunch looking for the quick solutions, from my experience.
I at one point tried to plot out a system that I called Predator/Prey. The goal was that there was a scene number, and all characters divided themselves into Predator or Prey relationships. The goal of any conflict scene was for the Prey to get away, and the Predators to stop that. It didn't necessarily end in a death, but defeat was still possible
I'm still not sure if I was right with that model. I think it's a really alien concept to players that they *want* to get away, that they don't want to be confrontational with their action hero characters. It's 40 years of "I kill X, I loot Y, I kick open door z". The idea that your character most likely is not the one with the sword or crossbow drawn, standing over a pile of dead bodies, but are the people on horseback, leaving a bunch of mooks in the dust as you ride off in pursuit of the prize is a very foreign one.
I have no idea how to create this kind of behavior, and reward it well. I need to think about it some more.
