WickedThought

The Heinig Defense

During playtest, the Mighty Mighty Jess Heinig came up with a brilliant pair of Aspects. “I Love My Wife,” coupled with “…and My Wife Loves Me.”

Now, some GMs may see this as a kind of safety precaution. Protecting himself against drama. If he’s in love with his wife and his wife is in love with him, how in the world can that not be min-max tweak wankerism?

I’ll tell you why. Because Jess is a game designer himself, a great GM, and a brilliant player. Most importantly, Jess knows exactly the kind of games I run. He came up with the phrase “The Wick Social Meatgrinder.” Throwing players into difficult social situations that violence doesn’t solve. In fact, violence just makes it worse.

What Jess handed me was a seven course feast on silver platters, complete with those nifty glass toppers that let you see the food inside. Because those two Aspects let me screw with Jess’s character in ways other Aspects don’t.

Baron Heinig is in love with his wife. That means he’ll do anything to protect her. His wife? Same thing. Throw one of them in the pot, the other jumps in with a length of rope and a life preserver, no matter what the temperature is.

These two Aspects also communicate to me what kind of stories Jess wants for his character. He wants his wife involved. He wants dramatic and romantic trouble. And this gives me so many ideas what to do, all I can do is thank him.

And I do that by putting his name in the book.

(from the Player Chapter)

I feel obligated to take a moment and give you some advice for that Cut-Throat Game we’ve been talking about. I know there are a few of you out there looking over the rules, figuring out the best way to manipulate the system to get the best character. The best build.

Well, I’ll give you a head start. Here’s what you need to do to get what you want, step-by-step and some advice on how to keep the advantage you’ve created.

Step 1: Get Vassals

If you are going to do this, get some friends to do it with you. Get a group together—at least six—and make characters together. Convince everyone else to agree you need one character who is in charge of all the other characters. Consolidate your strength.

Get all your friends to sign contracts. Blood contracts. Make sure they are happy with their contracts. That doesn’t mean you have to be fair, you just have to make sure they are happy. (Con men are great at this: making someone happy with a bum deal. We could all learn a lot from con men.) The contracts state that these lesser nobles sign over their land to you, giving you enough land to make you a bigger noble. Depending on how many allies you gather, you could be a Marquis or even a Duke. Make sure the land is yours. Without those contracts, none of this will work.

You can convince people by convincing them of the strategy. Let them know having a Duke as an ally is important. Many Seats in the Senate, vast lands, a network of allies. You also need to convince them that you are the best person for this job. If you can’t do that, don’t worry. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to betray the Duke and take his lands.

So, your lineup looks like this. You have one noble who owns all the land. The other players are vassals under his authority. Their lands belong to him, but they manage those lands under contract. Contracts they are happy with. Each vassal also has a title. Master Spy, Swordsman, Master of the Road, etc. Because each noble has a title, he gets a free action in your Province appropriate to his title. Your Master Spy gets a free espionage action, your Master of the Road can quell Trouble.

Step 2: Specialize

With your six buddies, make sure each of you has a different “best Virtue” and a different weakness. Cover each other. Make sure you are the absolute best at what you do. Cover your ass with allies. Make sure that you have one master diplomat, a master swordsman, a master hunter, a master scholar, a master artist.

Remember: ven economy works on favors written down in blood. Everyone is looking for favors. Information, swords, muscle, poison. You’ve got to make sure your little crew of nobles is ready to respond to any need or request. If someone asks you for a favor, and that particular favor falls under your weakness, you’ve got to be able to say, “I can’t do that for you, but I know a guy who can.”

Step 3: Get Married

You need a Spouse. Right now. Spend three points to get a rank 3 Spouse. That gives you three bonus Season Actions right off the bat. Then, in the first Spring, spend a Season Action to train your Spouse into NPC status. Make sure to pick Cunning as a Primary Virtue. If you don’t, you’ll gain an NPC but lose Season Actions. (An annoying quirk in the system, but there you go.)

With an NPC Spouse at the end of Spring, you can set your husband/wife to work, spending Season Actions to make your lands better. Remember: a Spouse can do anything you can do. Train Vassals, Explore, Espionage. Anything you can do, your Spouse can do.

A good Spouse doubles your Season Actions. You want this. So does your crew. Make sure all of them have good and obedient husbands and wives. Your character “improves” through Season Actions. Make sure you have double your allotment.

A good Spouse also covers all your weaknesses. If Beauty is your weakness, marry a Fox. If Cunning is your weakness, marry an Elk. Just make sure you keep your Spouse happy. (I sound like a broken record, now.) That usually means letting your Spouse do whatever it is they want to do. And keep smiling. Nobody likes being married to a frown. Get your Spouse a lover, keep the affair discreet and keep the lover happy, too. As for heartbreak, there are really two ways to handle this.

First strategy: make sure your Spouse’s lover makes the break. Your Spouse will be Heart-Broken (the Aspect). Console your Spouse with all the information you’ve learned about the lover: his unfaithfulness, his previous affairs, his secret marriage. Feed those flames. Then, arrange for proper Revenge. This will re-assure your Spouse’s faith in you and allows you to take the lover’s land.

Second strategy: make sure your Spouse makes the break. This way, you avoid the Heart-Broken Aspect. Also, when her lover demands Revenge, you are in the position to set the stakes. He’ll be pissed and willing to do anything to exact Revenge. Be his friend. Let him vent. Tell him about your Spouse’s previous dalliances and stoke those flames. Lament about your Spouse’s wandering eye and how disappointed you are in your Spouse’s faithfulness. Then, when you’ve earned the lover’s trust, betray him and take his lands.

Either of these strategies requires that you are ready for the end of the Romance—something you can arrange yourself. Knowing your Spouse is dancing with secret lovers gives you opportunities. Use them.

Step 4: Build, Expand, Build, Expand

With each new Region, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got yourself covered. Build Loyalty with Luxury. Make sure everybody in your Domain is happy. (click, scratch, click, scratch) Don’t expand too quickly. Build a strong foundation, then expand out.

All too often, I see nobles expand their lands without consideration to infrastructure. Each Province should have a Spy Network. Each Province should have a Seneschal. Each Province should have a Baron under your charge, making sure everything is going fine. Cover yourself. Make sure nobody is behind you before you take any steps forward.

Step 5: Have an Escape Plan

“Do not make plans, make contingencies.” That’s the lesson we learn from Lessons, the ven politics primer. Make sure that every step you take gives you the opportunity to side-step.

For example, when talking about Romance and Revenge up above, we talked about setting up your Spouse’s lover for a downfall. You must always be prepared for the opposite: that your Spouse and her lover are preparing for yours.

In fact, don’t just prepare for it: assume it is true. Don’t just send one spy, send three. Don’t tell them you’ve sent three, just tell each spy you’ve sent one. The only one you can trust. Tell all three of them that. “You’re the only one I can trust.” Then, make sure you get independent reports from each one. Compare notes. At least one of them will betray you. Find out which one, and use that spy as a counter-spy. Since your Spouse and lover are using that spy to feed you false information, you might as well do the same. Use the counter-spy to set them up for a trap… and once you do, set up the lover as a traitor so your Spouse will be inclined to kill him. That way, you get rid of the lover and keep your Spouse happy while keeping your own hands clean.

Contingencies.

Finally…

All of this advice comes from Lessons, the aforementioned book on ven politics, philosophy and strategy. I found it invaluable research for writing this game. Get yourself a copy.

What is a Roleplaying Game?
It seems every roleplaying game has this question in the introduction. Lots of different answers. This one is mine.

The typical response to this question goes something like this:

In a roleplaying game, each player creates a character–an alternate persona they use to interract with the world they imagine together. The players use rules to determine the strengths and weaknesses of their characters and use dice (or some other random number generator) to help determine the outcome of dangerous or risky or uncertain actions.

Now, this isn’t a very useful definition. In fact, the definition is complicated by the existence of games like Everquest, Guild Wars and World of Warcraft. These “roleplaying games” fit that description quite well… but they aren’t roleplaying games. Let me explain.

Chess is not a roleplaying game. Yes, you can turn it into a roleplaying game, but it was not designed to be a roleplaying game. If you give your King, Queen, Rooks, Knights and even your pawns names and make decisions based on their motivations–instead of the best strategic move possible–you’ve turned chess into a roleplaying game.

Like chess, in WoW, you have many choices, but no mechanic rewards you for making decisions based on your character’s motivations. In fact, the game punishes you for doing so by giving you a less-than-efficient character. After all, the point of WoW is beating the game. Becoming the most powerful character you can to take out the most powerful monsters.

Kill monsters to take treasure so you can kill bigger monsters to get better treasure to kill bigger monsters to get better treasure.

That’s not a roleplaying game. That is a very sophisticated version of chess. A highly intricate board game with rules so complicated only a computer can keep track of them. It rewards you for your choices.

It rewards you for your choices. But it isn’t a roleplaying game.

Houses of the Blooded rewards you for making decisions based on your character’s motivations, ambitions, desires and fears, not your own. 

I’ve played a lot of live action games, and all too often, I see players shout to the Heavens about their character’s motivations, but as soon as they are forced to make a compromise between that character’s beliefs and that character’s safety, I see them shut up and play coy.

Why? To protect their character. A player decision, not a character decision. An efficient decision.

Your character makes a less-than-strategic decision that makes sense to his motivations? Reward.
Your character do something completely stupid because he’s in love? Reward.
Your character do something completely stupid because he’s vowed revenge? Reward.

In this game, you can make the most efficient character you want. You can bend rules and jump through loopholes with the greatest of ease… but that isn’t the point of the game. The point of the game is playing a character and making decisions your character would make.

Not making decisions you would make, but making decisions your character would make. And the game rewards you for that.

And that, my friends, is what a roleplaying game is.