Great Ideas: OK, You're Awesome...Now Let's Find Out What It Cost! (Mythender)

I've been following an RPG called Mythender, in development by Ryan Macklin. The entire game is worth a look. It has a great concept and what looks like will be a pretty solid system that concentrates on dice pools and raw, unadulterated awesomeness rather than an accurate simulation of reality.

Look, sometimes you just need to blow up a mountain, okay?

Anyway, one of Ryan's preview articles for the game covers a concept that's rather similar to Eliminating Failure, but that provides an interesting variant. The idea, in Mythender, is that the player characters are tremendously powerful entities that are well on their way to becoming gods (though they'd rather not complete that particular journey). As such, though there are some limitations, each has the ability to complete truly epic feats of heroism, villainy, or just plain awesomeness. When a player wants to perform one of these feats and there's no obvious limitation preventing him from doing so, his character performs the feat. Unquestionably. It happens. There's no "it happens, but you hurt yourself on the way" or anything else that could make the character look less heroic or seem to struggle...it just happens.

However, a roll might still occur. Performing these feats can lead the character closer to his undesired godhood, and if the character wants to resist that, he faces a die roll. Succeed or fail, the act still happens...the roll just determines if the act also changes the character.

This is a terrific concept, and well-suited to the concept of Mythender. These characters need to be amazing and epic in tone. They absolutely should be able to accomplish incredible feats, and no, there shouldn't be any doubt of their success. But it shouldn't be without cost--the idea the game seems to espouse is very much a "power corrupts" sort of thing, so the more you use that power, the more chances it has to take root in your soul. Thus, the dynamic: players get to do awesome things often, without worrying about looking stupid if they fail, but they have to keep watch over their characters' corruption.

Mythender isn't the only game this could work with. Boiled down to its most basic idea, the concept I'm discussing here is "Yes, you progress/accomplish something for sure, but it could cost you something." I've discussed a similar concept in the aforementioned article on Eliminating Failure, but that discussed a concept that was more "you definitely succeed, but we need to see how cool you look doing it." There are degrees of success implied. This concept is more "you definitely succeed and look cool, but we need to see how it affected you personally." This might model a corrupting influence such as it does in Mythender (and could work, for instance, for magic related to the Cthulhu Mythos if written properly), but it could also model simpler things like the chance of exhaustion, physically or spiritually. The central point is that the action happens essentially as the player requested. The success or failure of the roll doesn't modify the actual action at all--just the price of it.

This does work best with a game in which the heroes are unquestionably extremely competent in at least some ways. If there should be doubt about the success/level of success of an action, don't use a concept like this! But if there needs to be absolute certainty about the action itself, but some question as to cost...this can work nicely.

The other thing I rather like about Mythender's take on this is that the cost is one the character can choose to accept. If you don't do the rolls and just accept corruption, in this case, you gain more power than if you attempt the rolls and roll a corruption result. It's a nice touch that shows a good opportunity for a philosophical difference between players.

Overall, this is just a nice example of using system to emphasize theme.