Weekend Legends

Story by Jay Barnson

There’s a saying about combat that “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” In game development, the same thing often happens with your game design coming into contact with the realities of development, and then the end users.

I have seen this happen several times, but my favorite story actually comes from a “dice and paper” RPG. It wasn’t Dungeons & Dragons – it was another system called Fantasy Hero.

The Fantasy Hero system was based on the Champions rule system, which was designed for simulating comic-book super heroes. So it was extremely flexible, mostly-kinda-sorta balanced, and could handle all kinds of cosmic-level capabilities. I had an idea for YEARS about a cult of mages that had a “Doomsday Spell” which was devastatingly powerful, but also reasonably cheap in character-cost points because it was uncontrollable and only triggered on the moment of their death.

The idea was that this band of “doomsday mages” had a scarred magic symbol written on their palms that designated them as possessors of this Doomsday spell. Killing them would trigger this effect, which was a colossal explosion that covered over a kilometer radius.

These mages would make no secret of this symbol, raising their palm to those they’d meet so that everyone would know NOT to mess with these guys, as killing them would almost certainly guarantee the death of whomever killed them. They would be feared – and, grudgingly, protected, by anybody they came into contact with. They were the ultimate emissaries of evil. And perfect fodder for recurring villains – the enemies who would smile smugly KNOWING that the heroes wouldn’t dare attack them.

I waited for a long time to bring these guys to bear against the players. I came up with the concept YEARS before I got to use them. And oh, boy, was I prepared for their dramatic appearance in a campaign. The forces of evil were invading the nation of good, and had occupied a fair portion of the eastern territories. They had a gigantic encampment around one major city they had just seized, and were getting ready to move again.

The attacking army sent one of these doomsday mages (whom they were in alliance with) to negotiate a surrender with the defenders – who were in turn joined by the player characters. I’d put a lot of time and effort into this doomsday mage. I expected him to be a recurring villain, a thorn in the player’s side for some time, as I was sure they’d hate not being able to kill this guy.

He appeared. I played him up cocky and oily and just rubbed it in. Nobody could touch him – he knew it, and the players knew it. The players hated him INSTANTLY.

And so they jumped him on the edge of town. And beat the crap out of him. But they did not KILL him. They knocked him unconscious, and kept him alive with healing spells. Just barely.

So now they had an unconscious Doomsday Mage that will self-destruct if he dies. What would you do with him?

Well, one of my inventive players had a summoned mount that could fly. It could carry both him (the character was a him, the player was a her) and this unconscious mage. So they flew up to an altitude of about 5,000 feet, flew off to the invading orcish army encampment, and let the unconscious mage drop.

Even assuming a terminal velocity of 20d6 damage, the mage didn’t have many BODY points left to live. He hit the ground and died instantly. The explosion was kind of a Hiroshima / Nagasaki type thing. The flying PC and his mount were too far above the explosion to take any damage, but the orc army was DEVASTATED, as my entire campaign was about to be. I sat in stunned silence as the players looked at each other, grinned from ear-to-ear, and asked, “Where can we find more of these Doomsday Mages?!?!”

After years of expectation, my great plans for the Doomsday Mages were ruined. Overnight, they become nothing but a mere footnote in the history of my campaign world. The Doomsday Mages found themselves hunted to be uses as involuntary weapons of war. Those without means of flying them to their death could kill them with slow-acting poisons. The Doomsday Mages scattered to the winds, seeking magical means to remove the awful doomsday spell and the scar on the palms of their hands.

The orcish advance was halted by the devastating blow to their front lines, allowing the defending kingdom to finally mount a solid counterattack (with the players’ help, of course). Dropping the mage-bomb was the pivotal point in the war and in the history of the world.

And the players —- man! When they realized that I’d never INTENDED to let them use the Doomsday Mage to bomb the attacking army into the stone age, they were simply beside themselves with glee for their own cleverness. And that game session became one of their favorite adventures of all time.

The take-away I learned from this was to always consider a new, untested feature that you want to add to your game / design from the point of view of a player looking to game the system. This is particularly important in a multiplayer game, as any trick that gives a minor advantage will rapidly propagate to become the only way of playing. And of course, playtest playtest playtest (not appropriate for dice & pencil RPGs, but critical for designing computer games).

The other thing I learned – and this is really only more appropriate to RPGs – is that the players LOVE to feel like they “out-clevered” the designer. So let ’em bask in their victory for a while. THAT will be the thing that they remember for years.

Wwill Old Man Henderson prevail?

What will Old Man Henderson do this time?

And at last, we end on the one story we were planning on reading. Hope you guys have been enjoying these videos too.