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Raithah
2012-08-22, 06:11 PM
There's a problem with my players: their characters aren't AWESOME enough. This doesn't stem from a lack of trying; they really do attempt to be heroic on a regular basis. Whenever the stakes are high or their chances grow slim, though, they don't reach for the long shot (which I would then jimmy behind the scenes to ensure their victory, but don't tell them that) and tend to either wait-and-see or turn tail and run.

It's a problem that I've no idea how to solve, but a recent-ish article on io9 (http://io9.com/5503945/good-character-development-includes-the-all+important-f-yeah-moment) regarding badass characters helped me identify a couple key, underlying issues.

First, most of the moments on that list require a fair degree of planning on either the player's or the DM's part, and would probably not be very fun due to that very lack of spontaneity. Second, those events make a character because of the risks involved in their actions; how do I convince people that they can succeed, though, without diminishing their sense of danger?

I realize that this problem is most likely universal, and that there's probably no simple, one-size-fits-all solution to it. Still, what have you done to encourage AWESOME (and do you mind if I imitate it)?

One Step Two
2012-08-22, 06:19 PM
For our group, we give everyone a crash course in Exalted, the stunt System encourages moments of Awesome, even ones in which there are no winners.
Sometimes, moments of awesome can be failures, but that doesnt diminish the character at all. For Example, in one notable game of Vampire the Masquerade, a character who found they were struggling too hard with unlife described for us how he planned to die, sitting out on the beach waiting for the sunrise, shuffling his lucky deck of cards, fanning them out and throwing them into the wind as the sun broke over the horizon.

We still speak of how incredibly cool that was.

In other systems it's tricker, because not many (that I know of) reward taking big risks like Exalted does, but regardless of system, one thing that is universal, is that you need to give them the oppertunity to do so as well. Orchestration of heroism is one thing, but it's just a scene without context. Tell them something is winable, but remind them, that they need to show off what it means to win, just to inspire others, that rolling dice for alturism is one thing, but they need to take a page from the Bard's book, and sometimes it isn't just about swinging your sword, but when.

Edited for clarity.

kyoryu
2012-08-22, 06:22 PM
Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard do a pretty good job of this with their fate-point-equivalents. You get them pretty regularly, and can dump a ton of them to be AWESOME. But since you don't have an unlimited supply, it doesn't detract from the fact that you've just done something that is beyond your 'normal' range of abilities.

Rallicus
2012-08-22, 06:35 PM
(which I would then jimmy behind the scenes to ensure their victory, but don't tell them that)

Why would you do this? Cheating in order to have "something awesome" happen isn't awesome at all.

I have a feeling, judging from this statement, that you also avoid killing characters. There's no sense of tension because the players have become accustomed to keeping their characters alive through watching and fleeing.

Kill them when they watch or flee. Kill them hard, but do it properly without breaking the rules. This will light a fire. Show them that fleeing won't always work. That sometimes desperate actions will be the best solution.

kieza
2012-08-22, 06:51 PM
I think a big problem might be the way awesome moments are set up in videogames; namely, they're scripted, and you don't have to plan them or seek them out in order to see them play out in a cutscene. It gets players into the mindset of playing the game cautiously in order to win, and then watching the cutscenes in which their characters throw caution to the wind.

After Mass Effect 2 came out (and most of my group played it) a couple of my players came up and asked why they "couldn't be a badass" in my campaign...to which my response was "why don't you try?"

Gamer Girl
2012-08-22, 07:04 PM
One of the best ways to encourage players to be awesome is to run and Old School type game. I can say this works out great for my game.

I huge number of players, even more so the newer ones that have only ever played 3/4E, get burned out with the whitewashed ''fair and balanced'' game. In short, the game becomes no fun if you will always win. They can coast through an adventure by a ''storyteller'' DM safe in the knowledge that their character can't die as it would ruin the DM's story. Or the DM just does the 'Disney Loss' type things instead of death(''Ha, Sage Doom, burned down your favorate tavern! Ha") Now some players loves the auto win easy button, but some don't.

So the burned out player will come to my game and be told right up front that it's a hardcore dice as the roll death type game with high magic and fantasy. Most players just shrug. Then are shocked ten minutes later when a troll eats their character. Some players don't like it and will grab their dice and go. But some players love it. It's a breath of fresh air to them and they love it. Just the fact that they might loose a character at any second of the game makes them play harder.

And when it comes to awesome stuff, they at least try. After all they know they can be killed if they just go shopping, so why not leap off a cliff and try and stop the lich?

Tengu_temp
2012-08-22, 07:20 PM
One of the best ways to encourage players to be awesome is to run and Old School type game. I can say this works out great for my game.

Yeah, no. Maybe that works for your group, but for most of them, it will have the opposite effect - an oldschool approach means that they will be overly careful with everything, because if they try to pull off something cool but reckless they will most likely die.

There are two things you need to do to encourage players to be awesome:
1. Give rewards for awesome stunts and feats. Depending on the system it might take the form of extra experience, bonuses to rolls, whatever. It must be something significant that will make the players want to take the risk.
2. You need to give the players some leeway and be merciful. If the players know that taking a huge risk and failing will mean they will at least get to stay alive, then they will be more willing to go for the risky option.

Let's give a example: a player is fighting his arch-nemesis in a burning castle. The player is low on HP, so he considers charging at the bad guy and push him into the fire. Look at how those three DMs handle the situation:
A - Treat it as a bullrush attack, if it succeeds the bad guy lands in the fire and receives some fire damage (way less than a normal attack), if it fails the same happens to the player and it's now the bad guy's turn to deliver a devastating blow which will most likely kill the PC.
B - Treat it as a normal attack, only refluffed.
C - If it succeeds, the bad guy is set on fire, the ceiling crashes on his head and he dies. If it fails, the PC lands in the fire, crashes through the window, falls into the river below it, loses consciousness and wakes up washed up on the shore a few hours later.

DM B is apathetic towards players doing awesome things, thus making them lose their motication, while DM A actively discourages it. DM C encourages it.

Look at Exalted, Spirit of the Century, Mutants and Masterminds. All of these are games that encourage the players to do cool things during the game. All of them give you bonuses for when you do something cool and innovative. All of them are also very non-lethal systems, the opposite of oldschool DND approach.

The Dark Fiddler
2012-08-22, 08:10 PM
As others have said, you kind of need to give an incentive for it. A mechanical benefit might not be necessary, but would help; other ways to encourage it would be letting something that wouldn't strictly be able to happen normally happen anyway, and taking extra care to describe their awesome action in a satisfying way. And you shouldn't make it so awesome attempts can't fail, because spectacular failures can be just as fun as spectacular successes. Tengu's example about the burning building is a good example; if the player tries the maneuver, he either succeeds in a fantastic fashion (collapsing the building on the burning rival) or fails in a fantastic fashion (crashing into the river below and washing away).

Agrippa
2012-08-22, 08:42 PM
^^Tengu: I didn't know that bull rushes don't deal damage on their own? Ah well, something else to fix. Though you did give me an idea for special attacks for characters when low on hit points. I call it the "death or glory attack". I'll post it in homebrew.

Tengu_temp
2012-08-22, 09:20 PM
I don't remember if bull rush deals damage in DND 3e, but it doesn't in 4e or in M&M. My example wasn't game-specific in any case.

Water_Bear
2012-08-22, 09:21 PM
Players will try to be awesome if they are engaged in the game. When their characters have something they will risk their lives for against the odds, the players will usually back up that enthusiasm.

If you want to make your players more engaged, then make sure that they have ties to the world. When DMs use NPCs the PC cares about as hostage-fodder or fridge them too often, players will descend into more Murderhobo behavior; when DMs give meaningful NPC interactions, players will be attached to them and be more engaged with the game as a whole.

DM fudging to make awesome stuff work is a bad idea, IMO. If your players have a good understanding of the rules their awesome ideas will pay off enough to be worth it; your fudging is unnecessary and patronizing. If your players don't understand the rules fudging will rob you of a teaching opportunity; asking what they want to do and walking them through the rolls to try it will help them grow as players.

Agrippa
2012-08-22, 09:26 PM
I don't remember if bull rush deals damage in DND 3e, but it doesn't in 4e or in M&M. My example wasn't game-specific in any case.

Sadly they don't, so bull rushes dealing damage is going to have to be a house rule.

Kitten Champion
2012-08-22, 09:46 PM
I, being me, have never lacked for such things. Still, it comes up in my improv group from time to time, tedious timidity of tepidness.

You get around it by bringing out the inner childishness, give them a role they like and that they'll commit to and make it fun. Don't push for a crowning moment of epic awesomeness until you've got them firmly grounded in their persona and feel emotionally vested in the story-line.

Jerthanis
2012-08-22, 10:39 PM
The problem with that list is that it applies to noninteractive media and not directly to RPGs. The things that characters do in such media are revealed to the audience in carefully calculated ways as to make the audience find them awesome, while RPGs let people know pretty well what's on the table at all times. I take issue with the idea that we have to be dazzled by AWESOME to be engaged, but it's not a big issue and it's not what this thread is about.

So a lot of people have mentioned mitigating the negative repercussions of attempting longshot odds, rewarding the attempt with bonuses of one kind or another, or by encouraging greater investment in the scene/stakes. All this is good advice, but I find that no matter how much you assure someone that their risk will be met with reward, I find that risk minimization will always be the number one priority of most gamers.

So make the longshot odds awesome maneuver their best option by making every OTHER option seem riskier. Sure, you could retreat, but the wizard has a sample of your blood now, so he'll be able to scry on you. Sure you could sit by and wait and see what the duke does, but by then, the prince will be poisoned. Sure, you can be cautious, but by then the pickpocket will have gotten away. Sure, you could die fighting on the rooftop with lightning striking all around but you sure as heck will die fighting on the staircase where countless orcs wait, too scared by the lightning to emerge from relative safety.

For instance, I was recently plucked away from the safety of my party in a D&D 3.5 game by a winged demon, ready to pick me apart in a terrifying grapple. I had one option to kill the demon instantly with a 10% expected success rate and a bunch of options that wouldn't kill the demon, but would work to mitigate the demon's damage or deal a bit of damage to the demon... but then it would almost certainly kill me on its next turn. I went with the 'longshot' odds because I figured it was more likely to save me, not because I was trying to be awesome. However, that circumstance wound up BEING awesome because I tried something difficult and it worked.

TheThan
2012-08-22, 11:35 PM
Hrrrm here’s some tips.

Provide interesting and cool terrain, obstacles, objectives and situations. This will allow you and them to create the cool situation. For example, a warrior leaps off the top of a tower and lands on a dragon, impaling it with his sword in the process. That’s pretty awesome, but if the players are not exposed to a all the various components that allows the warrior to make his death defying leap, then he’ll never be able to do it.

influence your players to play awesome characters. You need to influence yourself and your players. Set up a few movie nights and watch action movies, (Indiana Jones, die hard, Rambo, etc) to give them some ideas on what awesome characters are like. Then talk to them and suggest ideas based loosely off of some of these characters.

Switch systems. Spirit of the Century for instance is all about doing awesome stuff awesomely. I’m sure there are more systems that encourage it out there.

Get them emotionally involved. Get them to actually have fun with their characters. Find out what it is they want to accomplish, or what interests them and try to use that to hook them into the story, plot and current adventure. Once you do that, players might start taking more risks accomplish their goals.

Take their sheets away. Players have a way of objectifying their characters. They are not fictional people in a fictional world; they are stats and gear printed out on a sheet. You want them to play characters, no character sheets. Taking away their sheets (or playing a game without sheets) will hopefully make them stop viewing their character as an arbitrary set of numbers and stats. When that happens players will start to do things their character would do, no what is mechanically the wisest or tactically sound choice.

Raithah
2012-08-22, 11:55 PM
That's a ... much larger response than I expected. Normally I'd post a reply to everyone individually, but apparently this is a massive forum. Who knew?

I had written out a few paragraphs about what I'm planning on doing, but I suppose it'd make more sense to actually try out a bunch of these ideas before passing judgment on them. Thank you all so much; hopefully you've just made five or so peoples' saturday evenings more entertaining!

CodeRed
2012-08-23, 12:45 AM
This is kinda rambly but I hope you enjoy a story. A buddy of mine owned the Local Gaming Store and operated as the OverDM of 4 games that ran on Saturdays. He ran his own game along with 3 other games DM'd by his former players and all the games ran in OverDM's campaign setting with the players turned DM's former characters as stars in the Pantheon.

The overall plot going on was heavily involved with deific meddling as these new deities just replaced the Greyhawk gods after a Time of Troubles type event which began this Over-Campaign. So, to represent this in game, every got a Faith Point(tm) every level that could be spent or saved as you saw fit. It was basically, saw a prayer to your god in character and depending on how you worded it, roleplayed it, and invested Faith, you would get some kind of Divine Intervention. (Basically giving the DM an opportunity to give you a "Crowning Moment of Badass" at least once a level.)

Well, we got to level 6 in one of the games and came to the Big Bad head of the world's largest metropolis' Thieves' Guild. Up to this point he had killed NPC friends, murdered the Mayor, and even raped the paladin character's in game wife. Absolute monster of a rogue, this guy managed to survive all of my spells as a Wu Jen for 5 rounds and had beaten down the Paladin after finishing off the monk. (Small group of only 3 people who showed up regularly, we had people go in and out of the game because this DM was known as a player killer, which I accepted as a challenge.)

I was out of spells, one of us was dead, and the Paladin was about to join him. I had yet to use any Faith Points the entire game so I spent all six at once and uttered a short prayer to my nature god, Neogyah, "Save Leo, I will pay the cost." (Neogyah was a TN nature god and no boon could come without an appropriate bane, Circle of Life and all. In this case, the cost for saving the Paladin was my hitpoints, 27 in all.) It was made clear that this sacrifice was permanent, my character would be returned to the earth with no hope of resurrection. Because of the atmosphere of the campaign, everything that had been built up, the life and death stakes, and my willingness to do what it took to win, I still remember this 4 years later when Leo the Paladin stood up and smited that bitch to next week in my honor.

TL;DR? Work on the atmosphere and make the player's actions count in the world. Make the stakes high enough so that when you do win, you win big. Lastly, I REALLY suggest using Action Points of some kind. Whether Eberron style or some kind you make up, making it so you can "channel" badass when the chips are down makes for way more memorable games.

Totally Guy
2012-08-23, 02:46 AM
Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard do a pretty good job of this with their fate-point-equivalents.

That's not why. It's that you end up doing awesome things because you have a cause and the GM challenges it. Facing your cause is how you earn the meta rewards and facing up to opposition earns advancement for your skills.

The act of playing makes a good game. It's a fantactic dynamic, one that not enough games share.

Sudain
2012-08-23, 09:40 AM
I wish my old gaming group could see this. they never did anything awesome, never even tried. :(

kyoryu
2012-08-23, 12:15 PM
That's not why. It's that you end up doing awesome things because you have a cause and the GM challenges it. Facing your cause is how you earn the meta rewards and facing up to opposition earns advancement for your skills.

The act of playing makes a good game. It's a fantactic dynamic, one that not enough games share.

You're right, and that's a huge part of it, but I also do believe that mechanically luke has hit the right notes.

Most RPG characters *are* awesome. They can cleave through armies single-handedly, break the laws of reality, and in general are of mythic power and ability.

So why don't we see them as awesome? Because they do this stuff regularly. It becomes baselines. It becomes normal and expected.

AWESOME is pretty much always defined as being *above* the norm. If the system pretty much allows you to perform at a certain power level continuously, then mechanically, it's hard to go above that.

It's like River Tam at the end of Serenity. Awesome, yes. But awesome because we had never seen it, and that kind of prowess against Reapers was something previously unseen - they were the big bad scary things. If River had just pwned every single Reaper ever seen on the show, then it wouldn't have been nearly as awesome.

And you're right - half of the reason it was so awesome was because we cared about the characters and were invested in their success. And you're absolutely right that BW/MG/etc. do an awesome job of creating that. Maybe I've been so immersed in them recently that I've started taking it for granted.

But that investment wouldn't really translate to AWESOME if it wasn't mechanically supported. Lieam the mouse can't kill the snake in a single blow with his 3 Fighter skill. Without mechanical support, he just dies. And that's not very AWESOME. Sure, we can add a critical system, but then we're relying on the critical system to come up for us at the same time that the character really cares about the result. But by blowing everything he's got, he can get the dice pool to 10 dice - and then blow fate to open the 6s and get enough successes to one-shot the snake.

So I think they're two halves of the same AWESOME coin. You need to first have a situation that you're invested enough in for it to be AWESOME (which your post describes quite well), and then the mechanical support to actually follow through on it (which I was referring to).

jseah
2012-08-23, 01:02 PM
Are you sure your players are trying to be awesome? They might do heroic things, or so it seems to you, but perhaps ask them if they are actually trying to be a hero at all.

Personally, I don't play an RPG to see 'awesome' and so don't even try. But I do fight very very hard, weave complex plots/schemes and calculate cold odds. Some of them might result in heroic actions given the right situations.
So at least one sample exists of this, maybe there's more of us?

Zombimode
2012-08-23, 04:00 PM
Let's give a example: a player is fighting his arch-nemesis in a burning castle. The player is low on HP, so he considers charging at the bad guy and push him into the fire. Look at how those three DMs handle the situation:
A - Treat it as a bullrush attack, if it succeeds the bad guy lands in the fire and receives some fire damage (way less than a normal attack), if it fails the same happens to the player and it's now the bad guy's turn to deliver a devastating blow which will most likely kill the PC.
B - Treat it as a normal attack, only refluffed.
C - If it succeeds, the bad guy is set on fire, the ceiling crashes on his head and he dies. If it fails, the PC lands in the fire, crashes through the window, falls into the river below it, loses consciousness and wakes up washed up on the shore a few hours later.

DM B is apathetic towards players doing awesome things, thus making them lose their motication, while DM A actively discourages it. DM C encourages it.

This is not a very convincing example.
This situation may motivate a high risk high pay-off maneuver. If the player picks a maneuver that, in its mechanical representation, does not have the intended potential pay-off, there are two possible reasons for this:
1) The rules system is flawed in this particular regard.
2) The player miscalculated and made a tactical mistake.

For 1), you have the options to houserule or to change the system. For 2), there is no problem that needs to be addressed. Mistakes happen.

Forcing "awesome" situations by fudging the rules will only create the illusion of greatness.

To use examples for the comic of this very site:
Illusionary awesome: Durkon using Control Weather to destroy the Treants. It only worked because Thor Said So. The situation did not come from Durkons abilities, but was a result of fiat.

True awesome: Roy using Thogs own strength to break the pillars, then luring him to the centerpoint of the "cave-in". The situation evolved from Roys clever use of his abilities and the environment.

Draz74
2012-08-23, 04:06 PM
Play OldSchoolHack. It uses a mechanic literally called "Awesome Points" ... and they not only let you do cool stuff, they're also the game's equivalent of XP. And using them up helps you level up, rather than delaying your level-up.

Libertad
2012-08-23, 04:13 PM
A recommended step for encouraging players to be awesome is to give them in-game incentives for risky behavior. Make sure that the rewards relatively match the risk, otherwise the players may feel that it was all "too easy" or they got shafted, thus lessening the enjoyment of the game.

I'd also recommend the use of systems were PC death is a rarity or easy to recover from. "Meat-grinder" RPGs with high fatality rates tend to encourage cautious behavior over that of "action hero" stuff.

Jack of Spades
2012-08-23, 05:21 PM
Reading through the OP, it would appear that your players are being more cautious than you'd like. That's actually a good thing. It means they're engaged and care about their characters. However, cool stuff happening means risk. Awesome stuff happening means characters walking straight into a huge risk with full knowledge of the odds [insert Han Solo reference here].

So, assuming I'm correct in evaluating your players as engaged, you need to find some way to teach them about glorious failure. You need to show them that by taking risks one can access not only cool rewards but also the ability to die in a blaze of glory. Do none of the characters/players want that? Bummer. Looks like you'll have to force it on them. When they try to run away, cut them off. When they try to wait-and-see, let those scouts come over the ridge, count them, and turn around to tell the army there's only minimal resistance.

The best way to implement this is to introduce a villain who covers his bases better than the players do. The players teleport away? Mr. McVillain already has troops rummaging through their favorite safe havens. The players capture a lieutenant from the Legion of Evil? Suicide pill. The players take the macguffin? That was a fake, or there are 3 others that are secure.

The point of all this is that the only way anyone will ever defeat the perfect villain is to march into his palace and paint the marble with his blood. And storming a palace with a mere 4-5 people who can't afford to take the time to make elaborate plans will be full of awesome. Some of them may die. But it's your job as a DM to show them that a good death can be just as satisfying (if not more satisfying) than a boring life where there was no question of defeat.

Hopefully, that'll kick them into realizing that characters are temporary and are meant to be killed. That, in turn, will inspire more risks in the metagame.

Oh, also, high-lethality systems are good. L5R, Paranoia, stuff like that (to grab two wildly different spots on the lethality spectrum :smalltongue:)

HKR
2012-08-23, 05:29 PM
Donīt give them an exit route. If they donīt succeed they die. They will come up with something. Nothing is more satisfying than getting out of a hopeless situation by the skin of your teeth.

How well do you and your players know each other? If they donīt know you that well, maybe they donīt trust you enough as a DM to actually try crazy stuff (using mundane items in unusual ways etc.). Make it clear to them that you actually want them to succeed (if their plan is not complete rubbish).

Gavinfoxx
2012-08-23, 07:42 PM
[terrible advice]

I can't really support any of this advice... it basically just boils down to 'be a douche, and kill player characters, so that they stop caring about the characters'. No. Absolutely not...

You want to give, you know, CARROTS for risky behavior. Not a stick forced down their throats to beat down their will to care about their characters!

Zarrgon
2012-08-23, 09:04 PM
Bread Crumbs It you do have 'not quite awesome players', a good thing to do is to simply set them up. Put them in a setting where they can be inspired to do something awesome.

And easy one is to just have the bad guys do something dumb. Like the bad guys summon the 'Eternal Flame' right on top of the 'Explosive Coal Mine'. Or the evil lord controls his Ogre Guard as they wear big magic helms. Or the bad guys build a massive mobile super weapon base with an open shaft directly to the bases unstable 'magic bomb' core so anyone with a single arrow can destroy the whole base(oh, and while the base does have 100,000 mounted guards, you only send out seven when the base is attacked). Or the bad guys build a massive mobile super weapon base and then protect it with a force field from a far away forest filled mountain that is crawling with an entire hostile fuzzy dwarf army(And build your massive mobile super weapon base with a huge hole in the side that a galleon can sail through right into the bases massive unstable 'magic bomb' core).

Ironlion45
2012-08-24, 12:08 AM
Reading through the responses, I'm seeing a lot of good advice here; I'm also seeing a general theme, and one that I personally agree with.

If you're fudging the rules, you're taking away risk for the players. No risk, and the game soon turns into: "Oh, another Dragon? *Yawn* Okay."

You need the carrot and the stick, both. That's how plots work in most narrative games, and a well-crafted RPG adventure is no exception. Characters have to be driven to take risks because of the rewards, and also penalized for playing it safe, because playing it safe means the story goes nowhere.

Of course, for this to happen the players have to be genuinely invested in their characters. That is an entire different subject matter, however.

Eugenides
2012-08-24, 03:20 AM
Honestly, my biggest tip is to try to get them to try things, and then once they do, run with it. As a new DM with new players, one of the first things I tried to ingrain into them was the concept that "this isn't a videogame, the options are actually unlimited."

My players took to it. You want to impale the sub-boss kobold on your Scythe and then whirl rapidly causing his body to fly off, using it to knock some of his minions into a pit? Go for it.

You want to jump off the cliff that won't result in completely fatal falling damage, but grab an enemy on your way down and use a grapple check to make him take half the falling damage as your cushion? Go for it.

While these particular actions don't actually fall under the rules of the game, you can bet that my players are still talking about that time when they did that, and that they've realized they can try awesome things like that again.

Jack of Spades
2012-08-27, 04:09 AM
I can't really support any of this advice... it basically just boils down to 'be a douche, and kill player characters, so that they stop caring about the characters'. No. Absolutely not...

You want to give, you know, CARROTS for risky behavior. Not a stick forced down their throats to beat down their will to care about their characters!

I'm not going to bother re-reading my post, because I probably worded something wrong to give you this impression. I'm not saying players shouldn't care about their characters, of course not. I'm saying players characters shouldn't care whether their characters die. It's a big difference.

If no-one cares about their characters then the game just gets tedious. However, if everyone cares too much about the good health of their characters then you get a problem like the one described here. Yes, the carrot is necessary, but fearing the stick too much will cause as many problems as being too full of carrot.

I'm not saying to be a douche, I'm just explaining a certain way that characters could be shown why the real world is ruled by people who strive and take risks rather than the ones who planned all the day. I was making the point that if someone isn't taking risks with their character it's mostly because they are either not separating themselves from their characters enough (and thus they feel like any loss on their character's part is a loss of their own) or they aren't really playing adventurers (ie: risk-takers). I guess I didn't express well enough that if the GM wants more risks to be taken in a game, then it's the GM's job to fix one of those two causes.

paddyfool
2012-08-27, 04:52 AM
Fate, Savage Worlds, and Spycraft/Fantasy Craft all encourage awesome pretty well, through built-in reward mechanics for players who come up with creative solutions, describe stuff well and so forth. (Bennies/Action Dice/whatever).

EDIT: You may want to look at how one or another of these does it, and perhaps also at the Action Points rules variant for 3.5 (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/actionPoints.htm) (EDIT: although I've never tried that variant, and skimming through it, it doesn't look very well worked out) for ways to introduce such incentives into your game. Using either the action points variant, or, say, a limited stash of exploding D4s which the players can use to boost die rolls, with the additional rule that you can give players more of them for coming up with awesome stuff, might be one way to incentivise it.

EDIT 2: The "cheating death" rules in SC/FC also encourage high-risk play. Death, in those games, really isn't that much of a problem.

neonchameleon
2012-08-27, 08:59 AM
There's a problem with my players: their characters aren't AWESOME enough. This doesn't stem from a lack of trying; they really do attempt to be heroic on a regular basis. Whenever the stakes are high or their chances grow slim, though, they don't reach for the long shot (which I would then jimmy behind the scenes to ensure their victory, but don't tell them that) and tend to either wait-and-see or turn tail and run.

There's a simple option here: Stop jimmying it behind the scenes. Jimmy the rules in a way that the players have control over.

Looking at the ways to be awesome you linked:

The Great Speech
Outnumbered or Pwned
Surprise Turnaround
Moment of Altruism
Leap into the Unknown


These split into two categories: RP and mechanical.

The Great Speech is pure RP. If your players are the sort who like to and can give them then they will - nothing you can do either way.

Outnumbered or Pwned is actually a mechanical issue. You need some sort of way of actually modelling this - such that the PC that's broken can actually do this and has a chance of not turning this into an instant Darwin Award.

Surprise Turnaround. This is another mechanical issue. Spirit of the Century has fate points by which the PC can change things. In Leverage you get to establish flashback scenes. One thing these games have in common is that death is rare and you are expected to succeed; the question is how. You can also do it through skill in another way; you can set someone up quite nastily using just abilities and situational awareness - 4e gets this quite a lot with all the forced movement powers, and 3e spellcasters and 4e ritualists can use spells in smart ways. This takes detailing of the world and persistant scenariosm, and smart players with a DM willing to go with it. It's important to not cheat the surprise turnrounds or the players will feel cheated.

Moment of Altruism. Mostly RP. Can be augmented by abilities - and needs investment by the PCs in each others' characters.

Plunge into the unknown. IME this is the one PCs always do.


First, most of the moments on that list require a fair degree of planning on either the player's or the DM's part, and would probably not be very fun due to that very lack of spontaneity.

Not necessarily. The Surprise Turnaround can be a lot of opportunism or flashes of insight. If you're a 4e player (or just in general) present complex, interactive environments and too strong monsters, but few combats. Set things up so that the environment is there to use and then let the PCs work out how to use it. At its simplest level, in classic D&D a pit trap is an obstacle and once it's fired, it's fired. In 4e a pit trap once it's open becomes something to throw monsters in - and that vat of molten metal might be four squares away from the PCs - but if all of them have forced movement, they can team up to get the monster in there.


Second, those events make a character because of the risks involved in their actions; how do I convince people that they can succeed, though, without diminishing their sense of danger?

Drama Dice from 7th Sea or Perversity Points from Paranoia XP would be my favourite. Preferably something small but actually physically tangible. Keep a pot of tokens by you when you're DMing - small, glass blobs that are slighgly shiny are absolutely perfect. And whenever someone does something you want to encourage, pass them one of the beads. Three for something cool, and five for a moment of true awesome. Before any dice roll made by or against another player they can turn in any number of these chips to add or subtract that number from the dice, with a description of how the luck has swung, and at the end of the session they have to turn them all in.

The slightly pretty and physically tangible nature of the beads actually encourages people to want them, as does that they are a reflection of approval. Further the PCs have this meta-resource to spend on moments they consider climactic, and a way to encourage other people to be awesome and take risks. Everyone is rewarding everyone else for things they consider awesome and climactic. And bennies like that are much more tangible than mere XP. Plus you have surprise turnarounds thrown in partly for free - having a dozen chips dumped on your desparate shot by your fellow players is likely to make it a turnaround, and a surprise one that not even the person making it was likely to expect.

We've about three separate feedback loops going here. And a DM throttle - you set the baseline level for risk to be rewarded, which will set the risk level the PCs are encouraged to take.

Note: Also raise your challenge level. This is a bonus to the PCs, and also to be awesome you need genuinely awesome challenges.


One of the best ways to encourage players to be awesome is to run and Old School type game. I can say this works out great for my game.

And I can say it works out for some games but not others. As I've said, 4e encourages a certain type of awesome OSR doesn't. And vise-versa. Picking the right system and then challenging the characters hard is necessary. And whatever you are doing, routinely blow through the expected CR/ECL/Expected level and force the players to struggle rather than go through.

paddyfool
2012-08-27, 10:02 AM
Drama Dice from 7th Sea or Perversity Points from Paranoia XP would be my favourite. Preferably something small but actually physically tangible. Keep a pot of tokens by you when you're DMing - small, glass blobs that are slighgly shiny are absolutely perfect. And whenever someone does something you want to encourage, pass them one of the beads. Three for something cool, and five for a moment of true awesome. Before any dice roll made by or against another player they can turn in any number of these chips to add or subtract that number from the dice, with a description of how the luck has swung, and at the end of the session they have to turn them all in.

The slightly pretty and physically tangible nature of the beads actually encourages people to want them, as does that they are a reflection of approval. Further the PCs have this meta-resource to spend on moments they consider climactic, and a way to encourage other people to be awesome and take risks. Everyone is rewarding everyone else for things they consider awesome and climactic. And bennies like that are much more tangible than mere XP. Plus you have surprise turnarounds thrown in partly for free - having a dozen chips dumped on your desparate shot by your fellow players is likely to make it a turnaround, and a surprise one that not even the person making it was likely to expect.

We've about three separate feedback loops going here. And a DM throttle - you set the baseline level for risk to be rewarded, which will set the risk level the PCs are encouraged to take.


This. Basically, what I was trying to say, with different examples and put better.

UserClone
2012-08-27, 10:38 AM
Try Tenra Bansho Zero (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diamondsutra/tenra-bansho-zero-an-art-and-culture-rich-rpg-from?ref=activity). The idea of rewarding players for being AWESOME is baked right into the system.

UserClone
2012-08-27, 12:49 PM
Oh, and just in case you are not interested in TBZ, Raising the Stakes (http://esix.pbworks.com/f/RaisingtheStakes.pdf) (specifically the Death Flag bit) is quite possibly just the shot in the arm your D&D players need in order to give themselves permission to be AWESOME.

See Also: E6 (http://esix.pbworks.com/f/E6v041.pdf)

joe
2012-08-28, 03:59 PM
I'd forgotten about Raising the Stakes. That is indeed a good call.

Personally if this was a problem for my group (and I wanted my campaign to have the awesome-action flair to it) I would inform them thus, and tell them that actions done for the sake of awesome will receive a "+2 badass bonus" and apply as such. Let it be known immediately that you want to encourage action over caution and will reward players as such.

Most of my players often tend to run on this anyhow (which doesn't work as well in a political intrigue sort of campaign, though it made for an awesome escape scenario).

QuidEst
2012-08-29, 01:00 PM
Well, it will probably help if they read through some old "Funny D&D Stories" boards, since a lot of those are excellent awesome moments.

Consequences for failure can be awesome, too, if you do a good job with the villains. Suppose somebody gets captured. In Pathfinder, Cup of Dust is a day/level spell that sucks the water out of somebody and leaves them dying of thirst no matter how much they drink. That makes for a WAY more intense interrogation sequence, especially if they're given plenty of water. Makes a rescue more urgent. What if somebody goes it alone against a caster? A single second-level spell provides permanent blindness or deafness- a sorcerer can spam somebody with it until both effects stick, then talk to them with telepathy while they're all but cut off from the rest of the world. (Provide a mid-DC wisdom or intelligence check to use the telepathic connection to pinpoint the caster and charge.) Awesome bad guys help make awesome heroes.

If you're playing D&D, I find that Pathfinder gives a lot more nice options that help make the characters a little more awesome. No dead levels, so leveling up always gets you something nice, plus Gunslingers get a mechanical reward for doing awesome stuff. More feats for more customization. Hero points are (while not as good as many other systems' methods) a good way to get a mechanical boost in order to do something awesome.

Dante & Vergil
2012-09-01, 01:18 AM
You can use one of our Forumite's homebrew which can do just this, with the Badass Substitution Levels (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=6527724).