Back in April, I bookmarked a Mark Waid post at Kung Fu Monkey about false suspense in fiction. By false suspense, he means…
The kind of “suspense” that disintegrates the moment you give your reader one second to think about it. … The only reader who might actually be fooled into wondering about the outcome of those questions is one who’s never read a single piece of fiction before. … “Will he choose the sandwich–or his mother’s life?“
Waid is a comic writer, and so this is a very serious issue for him, and for anyone who writes read-only (i.e., non-interactive) stories. We’d like our stories to hold up to more than a second’s thought. We’d like them to hold up to a whole next day of thought.
So, yes, of course. False suspense in read-only narrative is bad. The main problem for the creator is catching himself, and then calling bullshit when it’s warranted. Waid’s pair of suggestions for turning false suspense into real suspense are great.
False suspense is a more interesting issue in RPGs, and especially in story-driven games, because the fact of immutable rules intended to simulate reality (to a greater or lesser extent) tend to make suspenseful moments in the game real, rather than false. That is, given some set of die rolls, your character might actually die.
But also, in story games, art imitates art. We see the horrible consequences that make suspense suspenseful deliberately neutered, often in secret, by dice fudging and its mechanical kin. Read through the comments to the question Will posed about fudging. Gamemasters often want to ignore the simulation of reality when it makes for a bad (“bad”) story. And there’s usually additional (if unspoken) pressure on the GM not to be, or not appear to be, a dick to his buddies by hosing their characters.
But when the dice are fudged too frequently, the entire game becomes false suspense. The players eventually get the (true) sense that no peril is real. To the extent that the game’s fun hinges on the suspense of whether the heroes will prevail, the game becomes unfun.
It takes solid guts for a storyteller—a comic writer or gamemaster—to maintain suspense in a story with a steady diet of real and horrible affliction, given how much everyone wants things to turn out well for our heroes. But I say to you, gamemasters, have those solid guts.
That’s not to say you must force or allow the unfolding story to take an unsatisfying turn in service of whatever way the dice happen to fall. Waid’s post suggests two judo-style methods that false suspense can be made into real suspense. Similar judo exists for gamemasters. There are RPG afflictions short of character death; some are worse. (Post your favorite in the comments!)
It’s valuable to give critical thought to the quality of suspense you’re creating, in games as well as stories.
>There are RPG afflictions short of character death; some are worse. (Post your favorite in the comments!)
Well, these examples are from Polaris, which doesn’t have a GM per se. In addition, only the player can actually propose that his character die, and that only under certain circumstances. So, oddly enough, the game actually encourages the Mistaken (the player responsible to Bring The Pain for a given PC) to come up with these “fates worse than death”.
So, in that spirit, I offer Bellatrix. Once a proud knight, she became impregnated by a demon as part of a bargain she struck with the forces of darkness. Then, in a fit of remorse, she attempted to kill her unborn demon child by stabbing herself in the stomach with her sword. This effort failed, and the child was born through this self-inflicted caesarian. In the end, Bellatrix died, broken and alone, surrounded by the demons she thought she could master.
Non-death afflictions have been a favorite of mine for years. Rather than ending someone’s story due to bad luck or lapses in judgment, they add depth to their story and continue it. As long as it doesn’t make the character “unplayable” (either mechanically or by undermining the core of what the player enjoys about them), then they’re a great tool.
There are lots of greats (have a side mission/bonus objective added to their goals against their will, a new enemy, a lingering scar everyone seems to notice, etc), but I’ve never seen a game system so thoroughly embrace the idea of “negative affliction as positive character hook” as the tabletop RPG, 7th Sea. In this system, the players could buy disadvantages for their characters, spending starting XP to invest in anything from Mistaken Identity, to a Nemesis, to an Addiction and so forth. Then, in any game where the disadvantage was brought to bear in service to the story by the storyteller (or the player!), the character got a bonus XP reward that quickly paid off the initial cost of the disadvantage.
So, if the dice went poorly and the suspense had to be justified, a player may well be forced to buy a new disadvantage for their character. A short-term hit to their valuable current XP, but a long-term gain for them – and for their stories!
Often, I find myself surprised to discover that suspenseful moral quandaries I’ve devised for my players end up holding no suspense because the player’s view of their character is so firm that there is no quandary.
I ask, “Will the barbarian slay the orc who—”
“Orc? Sure,” says the player. “I hit an AC of 23.”
So much for that decision point. The suspense wasn’t even false so much as not noticed at all. What you gain then, though, is character development — we’ve learned something interesting about the character. Failed attempts at suspenseful decisions have taught me a lot about the value of play that reveals or dramatizes a character… even if it doesn’t really test that character.
>There are RPG afflictions short of character death; some are worse. (Post your favorite in the comments!)
I sent my Traveller players to prison. Took away all their stuff. Most of them screamed like stuck pigs. A few had good interpersonal skills and actually thrived in the prison environment. Prison Planet was a great module.
I sent my Bushido players to Hell. They didn’t realize it at first. It dawned on them slowly. It was like every step took them further from their comfort zone.
I sent my Shadowrun players from their home base in the St. Louis Sprawl to Seattle. (I wanted to run a Seattle adventure and didn’t want to convert it to our locale.) Bereft of their contacts, they were woefully unprepared. Which was fun for them and me. One guy got some cyberware and I put a cortex bomb in there that became important later.
So yeah, for me, it was changing their environment that created suspense and uncertainty. Which certainly equalled fun for all.
I love doing this in the design of my towns for Dogs in the Vineyard, especially when I can specifically tailor decision points to things that work in game and which I know bug the player personally (the Faith says that a woman should be subservient to her husband, but even if she isn’t, he shouldn’t be beating her half to death in the public square). It’s always great to make them try and rationalize for themselves which is the lesser of two evils. I love it when they look up from the dice and say to me: “What does the book say is the right decision for the Faith?” and I respond “your soul is in your own hands, Dog.”
My players are (by and large) very full-immersion, though, so as long as the choices they are being offered are meaningful to their characters, the players feel them as if they matter. I’m spoiled that way.