One of the really cool features of Storium is the clarity that the game brings to the idea of obstacles for the characters.
If you’ve not tried Storium, check out my previous post to get the skinny.
In short, Storium is a game that uses the very simple idea of cards to help Narrators and Players build stories together.
One of the card types is the “Obstacle”, which is the focus for my post today… although I want to move the thinking back to traditional tabletop roleplaying.
Storium Obstacles
Playing with Storium this weekend, one of the cool features is that you get to design and play Obstacles for your players. Here’s an example from the current game to illustrate what we’re talking about:
Each card is simple: it has a challenge rating (the number of cards you need to play on it to overcome the obstacle), and it also has a suggestion for the outcome (written by the Narrator) depending on whether it’s weak or strong.
Strong outcomes give the player direct control over the story, letting them narrate freely the outcome.
Weak outcomes, arising from playing Weakness cards, allow more limited story options for the player.
Clarity at the Table
The idea of obstacles is nothing new. Storium isn’t engaged in a revolution in gaming, after all, but more of an evolution. Obstacles are the stock in trade of the tabletop RPG too.
As Brian Jamison writes:
“In an RPG, the obstacles are the points of conflict. Each short-term objective or barrier to success in an RPG is an obstacle. Simply speaking, the characters are out to do something and the Gamemaster presents obstacles that they eventually overcome. Each obstacle is a single, focused thing that blocks the team’s path to victory.”
– Gamemastering, p 81.
What Storium’s cards achieve, however, is to remind aspiring GMs (like me) that obstacles don’t have to be complex to be cool… and that you don’t need to pre-design or limit the possible ways to overcome each obstacle.
Simple
An obstacle is a simple, clear step on the path to overall victory in a story.
Even in a roleplaying game, it is described in a short few sentences (ideally, the single sentence summary confirms that you have a tight idea) and it has a difficulty defined by the game rules. This might be a Difficulty Level or a whole set of stats, depending on the type of challenge and the level of complexity in your chosen game system.
Strong or Weak?
The really key bit to focus on is the idea of Strong or Weak outcomes.
Rather than pre-figure the ways in which the players might overcome the obstacle, just focus on how things will look afterwards:
- What if they do this really well?
- What is they do this, but only just barely?
Certainly, as GM, you might have some cool expectations on HOW they will overcome the challenge. I’m not saying, “ignore those thoughts.”
I’m suggesting that you don’t over-think things.
Using the example…
Using my example from the Storium game, let’s consider the ZIRKU SYSTEMS SEC DROID. I would never have expected the group to act as it did in the online game: one guy even leaped up onto the machine’s shoulders to wrestle its neck.
In a traditional RPG, I would probably have expected a straight gun fight. If I had only planned on that, I might have been tempted to “shut down” the wrestling attempt (maybe justifying it as too silly). That would have been a loss to the game.
By keeping my expectations loose, I am much more inclined to “say yes” and help the players to tell their story.
And that’s the point: it’s their story just as much as it’s mine.
In summary
- Think in obstacles
- Keep them simple
- Work out the Strong and Weak outcome possibilities
- Let the players approach it as they choose
- Say, “yes” if you can.
Game on!
It’s also worth thinking about what kind of and how many challenges you throw at players. (And challenges don’t just have to be Obstacles. NPCs are played as challenges, too.) Low-card-cost challenges are simple things players can do that let them “own” part of the scene. Handy if some of your players feel like they don’t get enough say in how things go. Ideally, you should have enough challenges that everyone gets a chance to “win” fairly frequently.
Remember that, if you want to guarantee more than one player gets input into a challenge, it has to cost at least 4 cards, since 3 is the most any one player can play per scene. But if you’re going to force more than one player as a requirement, be sure there’s something in that challenge to interest more than one player, or you’re going to have one grumpy player when he can’t find anyone else to cooperate.
High-card-cost challenges are great for more complicated problems that are going to require a lot of description and discussion to suss out. But they can also lead to scene slowdown as everyone plays “reverse chicken” and tries to save back their points in the hope of getting to spend the last one and write the ending. That’s another good reason to be sure you keep a good mix of short and medium challenges in there, too. Keep those points a-spending.
It’s also a good idea to keep back some points in reserve when plotting out challenges. If you set the maximum point value worth of challenges, you’re requiring all your players to play all three cards each in that scene. It’s possible some of them might not be able to find anything that fits the cards they have or their characters’ motivations. If you keep back at least 20-25% worth of a scene’s points, that means there’s flexibility for the ones who can’t figure out what to do.
(That being said, sometimes a make-or-break all-in team effort is required. But again, save it for special occasions.)