The Gaming Den

[mean_liar]

I want to have (semi)intelligent enemies without having a central GM role.

Currently, for the minigame I'm attempting to tackle, this involves every player being responsible for a Nemesis targeting another player, where the success of a Nemesis gives the player and the Nemesis some kind of reward, with the other non-played NPC elements following some basic scripting.

The context is long-term factional contests. The players will be running characters, but also organizations; their opposition are other organizations as well as unexpected crises. While the crises (plague!) can be scripted, the non-player organizations may or may not have an interest in directly opposing the players at any given moment in time.

So, any ideas? What ways could you suitably, engagingly model a collection of actors with agendas without having a GM in charge of determining every non-player action for the "round"?

[shadzar]

so you want to reward a player for playing AGAINST the other players?

have you just tried a PvP game?

sounds like the players arent even running their characters anymore, but running the faction against the DMs little group of characters. WotC released Reverse Dungeon that does this. the players become a group of DMs and the DM becomes a small party of players.

otherwise you are just creating armchair generals that at some point a player will be in charge of a faction he is working for, and its just REALLY pushing things credibly.

maybe give a direct example of HOW this would work, not WHY you want it to work?
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Swordslinger wrote:

Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.

Lewis Black wrote:

If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.

good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)

[mean_liar]

I must be desperate because I viewed your post.

Every round, players will have individual characters as well as factions they control, in-game, as agents of their characters.

There will also be a collection of opposing factions and crises.

Factions (and to some extent crises) will have natural opponents in certain characters; it arises out of the game's cooperative setting design that your enemies are generally enemies that have something to do with your character. They killed (or are) your dad, they're digging up your revered dead, or whatever. So most of the opposing factions will have a natural target.

The players also advance as a group - that is, horizontal power expansion (little incremental tricks) occurs individually, but success has to be mutually shared to get a vertical power expansion (ie, more powerful attacks).

The idea, in its current amorphous state, is that every round the opposing factions need to DO something. That's the real trouble: how do you speedily get a collection of opponents that may or may not directly move against the players to act convincingly?

[...You Lost Me]

I really can't think of anything but problems... I see that a player with an opposing faction will do what they can to assist that faction, both in their Faction Phase and their Player Phase, because that's how they win.

If anything, I'd have one or two players being The Monsters and one or two players being The Heroes, and perhaps those could switch by encounter? Each player would cover for another?
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[shadzar]

[Chamomile]

I don't know any of the details of your system, but if at all possible it'd be better to run off of a simple script.

[Ice9]

Seems workable, you're basically just having a player that isn't in the scene run the monsters, except that in this case the "monster" is an organization.

Now for the first part of that to be true, you'd want to make sure that there isn't much interaction between the character and nemesis that the same player is running. For example, if Bob is playing Xyzzy the Sagacious and also the Discount Warlord Guild, said guild should generally not be targetting or hiring Xyzzy (although if Xyzzy was actually to join them, I guess that would be ok).

Also, I think Wraith did this, or something similar.

[hogarth]

It's hard to answer without knowing what type of game your players like. For instance, I personally don't like games where it's possible for me to be eliminated (e.g. time to go read a book while everyone else plays), so I prefer a game which is heavily weighted towards the bad guys losing. But other people thrive on player-vs.-player games.

[mean_liar]

The larger context is a semi-typical TTRPG.

I'm just really looking for a way to not have a GM in the game, while having a range of opposing elements within a section of play that don't have an immediate goal.

I mean, in combat, scripting is easier: eliminate the opposition based on initial placements and threat assessment. Here, with a more long-term view of things, it's not so clear that any particular faction would want to immediately charge and destroy any particular player faction. Perhaps they want to interact positively with some non-player factions, or perhaps they want to act against them.

I think I'll have to script it out a little more rather than give the reins to anyone, maybe invoke Schroedinger's Opposition (they don't exist as a fully-formed entity until you interact with them) or something.

More thought is clearly required.

...

I used this sort of thing in a completely not play-tested at all TTRPG about professional wrestling ( http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53130 ) where players are explicitly encouraged to use NPCs as their proxies to crab-bucket their fellow players and work against them. Here, I don't think the mechanic works as well.

[Winnah]

There was something like this in WtO

[FrankTrollman]

Wraith is the coolest game I don't want to play. The antagonism of it kind of works in a horrible sort of way.

The goal of distributing the work of controlling team monster around the table is to get incentives set up such that the players want to do a good job in playing them. The Shadows of W:tO actually had that going because the only palpable goal of the game was "have cool stuff happen", so doing cool stuff with your turns as the Shadow was as much as you could ever hope for. That and the PCs were more doomed than Paranoia Troubleshooters, so who cared if you accidentally killed the party?

You could do something where accomplishing goals with the monsters under your control gave you narrative imperative points or plot cards or something that allowed you to push the story in directions you wanted it to go. Or even do something dissociative and post modern like giving out XPs for the PC for good monster play. No matter how crunchy and goal oriented your game is, I'm sure there is some way you can get the incentives to line up the right way.

-Frank

[shadzar]

so if i understand correctly...the idea here isnt to distribute DMing, but a DM-less game? or an everyone is a DM game?
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Play the game, not the rules.

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Swordslinger wrote:

Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.

Lewis Black wrote:

If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.

good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)

[deanruel87]

The "Marvel Heroes" board game does something like this. Each player plays both as a team of superheroes and as his opponents Villain. As superheroes you don't fight each other or anything but you do fight your supers against his villain. Now admittedly this game only has one "winner" which is whoever's super team did the best, so it may not be directly applicable. But it's a good board game that people quite like, so worth looking into I'd say.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14808/marvel-heroes
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[fectin]

[mean_liar]

[TheFlatline]

[deanruel87]

What if you codify in the existence of "Nemesis's's" into the system. Like it is a part of the game idea and story system that each player has to create a Nemesis who totally wants to destroy him and solely him really at the cost of almost anything. Then it's fine if each opponent focuses on one player individually at a time, because everyone's turn will come up.

The more problematic part is if a more skillful player is running Player A's villain while a less skillful player is running Player B's villain.
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[Fuchs]

For a few years we ran a game where every player also was a DM, running their plots in the shared setting (with one party, not different parties). Usually each session we'd switch back and forth, at times focusing on one adventure, sometimes running a few parallel. It did work out decently well.

[Judging__Eagle]

There are some modern RPGs that do use this model.

Each character creates not only their character, or team/roster of characters; but also creates a Nemesis, either for all their characters, or simply individual characters.

The actions of the Nemesis are conducted in a Nemesis phase; and are controlled by the player to the left of whomever's Nemesis is acting (or Mister Cavern if no other players are at the session).

It's much more narrative driven, and much less tactical table top driven, which means that the player beside you probably will use your nemesis to stymie your character somehow.
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[hogarth]

[mean_liar]