WHAT IS THIS?

A countdown stack is a pile of tokens, typically glass beads, candy, or poker chips, plunked down in the middle of the playing space. They drain away at a measured rate, people can spend them (or add to them) for various purposes, and when they’re all gone, something happens. The purpose of having a countdown stack is to put pressure on the game to keep things moving, and to act as a visible reminder to the group of “the coming thing”, and to get people engaged in, and totally onboard with, the endgame thing.

WHEN TO USE IT

When the game is all about the build-up to some event, and that event is something the characters are working to overcome a countdown stack may very well be appropriate. In a scenario where everyone is trying to survive the zombie attack through the night, the sun comes up when the stack is gone. In a scenario where the characters are racing to stop Dr. Whatever from unleashing atomic devastation on New York city, the countdown stack can mark the time until he does. The countdown stack can help make a high-pressure situation even more pressured.

THINGS TO SET

Before setting a countdown stack in the middle of the table, four things should be decided on:

1. What happens when the stack runs out? A happy ending for survivors of the zombies? Horrible destruction in atomic fire? The death of the king, planting the best-positioned character on the throne? Your pizza delivery is now late?
2. How fast does it naturally deplete? One token per hour of real time? One token per day of game time? Once per “scene” during the game?
3. Does “hitting the stack” add or remove tokens? As described below, one of the ideas here is that characters can gain benefits by ‘hitting’ the stack (either adding or removing a token). If the ‘thing that happens’ is a good thing for the characters, then hitting the stack adds tokens to it. If the ‘thing that happens’ is terrible, then hitting the stack should take tokens away from it. If the thing that happens changes the situation, then whoever acts as opposition to the player (typically the GM) either adds or takes one away, whichever they feel the character would want least at that moment.
4. How many tokens to put out there? This is figured by estimating the results of the above, and how long the actual game session or sessions are intended to run, and making a guess. After using countdown stacks a couple of times, estimating “the right size” should become easier.

HITTING THE STACK

This is where the idea of a countdown stack goes from being a simple timing device to actually making the play itself more interesting. As above, hitting the stack may either add or remove a token, depending on the outcome of an empty stack. Here are some possible uses for hitting the stack (there are plenty more possibilities):

• Substitute Points: Many games already have some kind of spend-able points, Fate or Action or Drama or whatever. One of the easiest plug-ins is to simply say that a player can hit the stack and get any of the effect they would get from spending one of those points.
• Do-Overs And Straight Wins: If there are a whole lot of tokens in the stack, and they deplete pretty quickly, then allowing players to hit the stack to “do over” some rolls or other small bits can work well. If the stack is smaller, and depletes more slowly, the tokens are more valuable; in that case, simply saying “hit the stack to succeed at the roll, even if you failed”, might be totally the right thing for the setup.
• Reprieve: In a situation that is a ‘perfect storm’ of bad stuff, it may be useful to let any player hit the stack to get a scene where they can rest, recuperate, reload, all those things. A GM that wants to really push it can make this the only way to hit the stack, remove the natural depletion, and just pound on the characters constantly, letting them set the timing of breaks by hitting the stack.

TEMPTATION HITS

Possibly one of the diabolical ways to use a countdown stack is for a GM to use it to make offers. Things like “Y’know, I’ll give you that roll, if you hit the stack”. If the players are cautious about hitting the stack, but dig the idea, a GM can have a lot of fun making such offers. However, GMs should be careful with their temptations; when offering such temptation, the offers should be spread mostly evenly among the group, or made to all of the players at the same time.

CAPPING STACK GROWTH

When the result of the stack running out is a good thing or something that changes the game entirely, it can be handy to set a limit on hits. Making this limit easy to see and judge, though, is essential. If, for example, the starting stack is ten white poker chips, and hitting it adds more, it might be declared that all hits add a red poker chip - and when the red chips outnumber the white ones, players can’t hit the stack from there on out.

COMPATIBILITY: This plug-in is compatible only with games where players have selectable components for their characters (systems where character are static, or player choice isn’t part of development, won’t work here). It work most easily with point-based games, but can work with level-and-feature games as well.

WHAT IS THIS?

Imagine if, while playing along, one of the normal side effects of failed rolls, of taking damage, and most other negative outcomes, was that you gained points called “strain”, and could spend those points to change your character - not to make them larger, but to remove some features and replace them with others, making them dynamic in ways other than direct growth. That’s the idea here. All the parts of integrating strain into a game are interlocked; while they’re presented in a set order, each affects the others, and you’ll want a solid idea of all of them before you try it.

ACCUMULATING STRAIN

The most obvious component of putting strain into your game is ‘How do characters get strain?”. A quick list of good possibilities follows; the ‘point values’ given are generic suggestions, and you’ll likely want to add to and remove from this list, alter values to suit your campaign and system, and so on.

• Failed Roll: 1 Point: Anytime the character attempts and fails a roll during a stressful situation, they gain a point of strain.
• Damage Taken: 1 Point: Anytime the character takes damage during a stressful situation, they gain a point of strain.
• Conditions Applied: Varies: Depending on the rules, some conditions might be worth strain - ones that take the character out of action, or change their role in the group, or their role in society, are especially appropriate.
• Moments of Frustration: 1 Point: Whenever it is a character’s turn to act during a stressful situation, and the situation is one where most of the characters have useful things to do but the specific character doesn’t, they can declare a ‘moment of frustration’. The character tries to find something useful to do, fails, and gains a point of strain.
• Social Censure Or Expectations: Varies: A character that is severely pressured to change by society, whether to stop acting in a certain way or to perform some task they are ill-suited for, may be given strain on an ad-hoc basis while the pressure remains.
• Retraining Time: 1 Point per Day: Time a character spends deliberately working to retrain their skills, change their focus, break habits and learn to thing in new ways, that kind of thing, might generate strain - or this time might be a basic requirement for spending strain, or both; this is discussed a bit more further below.

THE PURCHASE LIST

In addition to “How to get it?”, it’s necessary to set “What can I use it for?”. And this is answered by creating a purchase list. In a point-buy game, this is as easy as can be; simply set the amounts of strain gained so that by spending ten points of strain, you can remove something worth ten regular points from your sheet, and then add something else that’s worth the same amount - remember, strain doesn’t fuel character growth, it just allows for character change. In games with ‘negative points’ for problems, strain can let you swap one problem… for another problem. In a game that isn’t based on point-buy, you’ll need to assign point values to everything that strain can be used to remove and replace. So, you might list “One character level: 100 strain (must be replaced with another level)”, and “One class option: 20 Strain (must be replaced with a class option or feature)”, or whatever is desired. This will likely take a bit of brainstorming, to get a list, and then some tinkering, to get income and costs balanced in a way that suits the game.

HOW TO SPEND IT

Finally, once the means of getting strain and the possible purchases are generally known, this just leaves the process for spending it. There are two basic options here...

• Flashovers: A ‘flashover’ is a dramatic moment or scene where a character changes something about the way they behave. The old man takes down his sword from the mantle and swears a terrible oath. The sheriff throws his badge in the fire and dons a mask instead. And so on. A flashover should always be assumed to ‘take a little bit’, but is comparatively sudden. If flashovers are used, retraining should grant added strain to help the process, rather than being a requirement.
• Retraining: The slower, steadier way. The swordmaster, hand hacked off, apprentices himself to a Magus. The princess, having shunned the court, takes up archery, and begins to lose her polished manner in exchange for lethal skill. To use this option, a set “retraining time per point” will need to be set.

THE FLASHBACK TRICK

In some games and settings, one trick to use with strain is to allow a character “one last scene” using the skills they trained away - and, depending on the scene, to offer them the chance to undo the change at the end of the scene, or confirm the changes (the strain stays spent either way). The princess gone feral returns for one last night at court, the swordmaster-turned-mage binds the Lich Blade to his arm for one more fight. Alternatively, a character with enough advancement points (or whatever) might be allowed to spend those at the conclusion of the scene, and keep both.

Wrath Tokens

COMPATIBILITY: This plug-in is compatible with most games that feature significant physical combat with potent adversaries.

CREDIT & CAUTION

This plug-in grew out of discussion with Ryan Macklin of Master Plan about his upcoming Mythender RPG. At the time of this writing, it has not yet been ‘torture tested’ in play.

WHAT IS IT?

The characters at engaged in a pitched battle with a gigantically powerful foe. The knightly hero has been carving it to ribbons, and the beast turns and… splatters the thief all over the wall. Wait. No, that’s not right; the knight has five wrath tokens in front of him, and the thief only has one. It goes for the knight, and hits; he tosses away a wrath token. Next round, with the knight wounded, his squire takes a desperate gamble; she scoops up a gem the size of an egg and starts sprinting, hoping to draw fire away from her mentor; the GM checks her current Wrath (four!), and agrees that her actions push her up one more token, making her the main target.

WHY TO USE IT

When there’s only a single foe, or the enemies facing the characters attack as a mob, wrath sorts out targeting and allows tracking of tactics for ‘drawing fire’ and the like.

A BASELINE

What follows is a mostly system-agnostic application of this idea; it’s one that you’ll likely want to hack a bit to fit your game, but it gives us a starting point.

• The Basics: At the start of a battle where Wrath is used, each character on the scene that looks like a combatant gets one (characters that appear to be total non-combatants start with none). An enemy will always choose to act against a target with more wrath than one with less if it reasonably able to do so, and if it can only reasonably attack another character, it suffers a one-point (or die, or whatever) penalty for each rank of difference between it’s target’s rank and that of the character with the most Wrath. Five wrath is the limit.
• Getting Wrath: A character gains three wrath each time they damage the foe (up to a maximum of five). They gain two wrath for harassing the foe or aiding others in attack (up to a maximum of four). And they gain one wrath for healing, hiding, or otherwise giving benefits to those that have more wrath than they do (up to a limit of three). The GM may add other actions to this list ad-hoc.
• Losing Wrath: Each time the enemy damages a character, they discard a wrath.
• Tactics: A character may gain two wrath, or discard one, as their turn, if the player describes a suitable action (normal minimum of one, maximum five).

HACKING TO FIT

So, generic version in hand, it’s time to hack this idea into shape for the system and the campaign you’re thinking of. Here are some of the important considerations:

• The basic range: Ranking wrath from zero through five is simple, and generally easy to remember, as well as being ‘coarse-grained’ enough that an enemy will still be able to pick between aggressive targets fairly often. Squeezing it down to an even smaller range, such as from one to three, creates more choice for the enemies while still keeping the basic functions. Enlarging the range is more ‘fine-grained’, but can also mean that enemies never get to make tactical decisions at all, and are basically ‘robotic’.
• Monstrous quirks: It is possible to give different kinds of foes different (or simply longer) lists of ‘what enrages them’. Dragons might consider a theft as bad as an attack; gangsters would likely take note of anyone shouting “Hello, police?” into a cell phone, undead might be enraged by the energy of healing magic, and so on. Some units might be specially trained to go after certain behaviors first - to always take down the ritualist, or the medic. Others might be blinkered enough that only damage to them will really get their attention.
• Existing Abilities & Skills: Some games have existing abilities, skills, or other such rules items that might be applied differently, or have new uses entirely, when these rules are used. A bodyguard’s ability to shield someone might become the capacity to automatically have one more wrath than their charge; the brute that spits in the face of his foes might find that their skill instead allows them to gain wrath at a remarkable rate. Defenses that provide sanctuary or calming effects might reduce wrath; the ability to bluff might allow an assassin to make it seem as if someone else was the source of their attack.

WITH MULTIPLE FOES

As written, wrath is meant for big applies to fights with a single foe (or mob). In cases of free-ranging melee, wrath might simply indicate who ‘unattached’ enemies gravitate towards, or might be compared with how many attackers are ‘on them’ - any player with more wrath than attackers is a valid target, and the one with the biggest gap between wrath and attackers is the most valid target.

DICE OVER TOKENS

Instead of tokens, it’s very possible to just give each player a big red six-sided die to put in front of them, and raise the maximums and minimums by one. Then, players just turn it to the right face as needed. If you do, though, make sure this die is easily spotted and read from across the playing area.

Event Bounties

COMPATIBILITY: This plug-in assumes that your game uses tokens of some kind - whether as part of the rules, or to represent points of some kind (Fate, Action, Drama, Experience, or whatever kind). If your game doesn’t or can’t do that, this trick is mostly limited to GM use, with the GM writing specific rewards on the cards, rather than putting on tokens.

WHAT IS THIS?

Often, there are sessions where “It would be totally cool if…” goes running through the head of someone at the table (often, but not always, the GM). So, consider this: In the middle of the playing area, or off to one side, there are a bunch of recipe cards. Each one has a “thing that happens” on it, and a stack of tokens - points you can use. If your character makes that thing happen, the tokens are yours. The GM can grab another card, write an idea on it, drop on a token (or several), and just put it over with the others, content in the knowledge that if a player is actually interested, it’ll happen. Depending on the group and the game, anyone might be able to toss a card out there, putting their own tokens on it, and the GM might be able to collect on them.

WHEN TO USE IT?

This idea works well when the characters have a lot of flexibility in their actions; in high-pressure ‘mission’ games, there’s not much point. At points where there’s no set goals, and the characters have time to get into complicated nonsense (the kinds of things described under “bountiful events”, below), it can be ideal.

...HEY, WE’RE BACK IN TOWN.

Another way this idea can work well, in games that jump between different pressured situations and a common “loose” one is if the events described only apply outside of the high-pressure situation. So, for a group of fantasy adventurers, these bounties might be something to chase “back in town”, but which are set aside when in the midst of an orcish raid or down in some crumbling ruin.

REPLACING NORMAL REFILLS?

If the group thinks this method of gaining points is interesting, and finds that it fuels really great play, it may be desirable to remove some or all of the ‘normal’ ways to regain such points, and put even more of these cards out. This should only be done after trying it out in general, and after checking the game to see what kinds of things the normal method of gaining points encourages, if anything (can those be done without? Should they be?)

BOUNTIFUL EVENTS

Here are a few criteria that make for good things to “put bounties on”. If people other than a GM are allowed to place bounties, then either these or some other set of guidelines should be upheld, to ensure that bounties make play more interesting, rather than less interesting.

• Are events, not goals: An event shouldn’t be “Your character falls in love”, but “Two characters fall in love” - if some character decides to play matchmaker, to cause that event, that’s awesome. Likewise, some other ideas include: ‘A trap is sprung’, ‘A complicated plan is attempted’, ‘A pure heart triumphs’, ‘A damaging secret is revealed’, and ‘A rescue is carried off’. All of these can be approached in many different ways, and can be left open to interpretation. Note that repeatedly setting bounties on several similar events can flavor a game quite heavily - which can be good or bad, depending.
• Are relatively easy to cause: It’s typically better to have several one-token events that add up to complete craziness that one several-token event that describes something huge. Easy bounties are things players will snap up quickly.
• End up creating more action than they end: When a bounty is placed, whoever places it should have a ready willingness to carry on based on the result, in order to create more action (and interaction) for the character that achieves it. This doesn’t generally mean having a specific idea in mind (given the open nature of good events, it usually can’t), but it does mean that the overall theme of the event is one they’re interested in playing with further.

SPLITTING THE POT

It’s very possible, depending on the event given, for an event to be caused by multiple characters. In this case, assuming the bounty is large enough, whoever placed the bounty in the first place divides the bounty between them, in whatever way they think is most appropriate. In the case of significant group efforts, it may be worth “rounding up” this division; in others, less so.

RAISING THE BOUNTY

Regardless of who placed a bounty, once a bounty is placed, anyone may add to it at any time out of their resources. In some games, this means that players may set bounties for events they’d like the GM to cause, and the GM can turn the idea directly back over to them by simply adding more tokens. If this becomes common, players may start brainstorming different kinds of things they’re interested in, putting them out, and seeing which ones the GM “collects”, and which decides to “boost up” for them. ...And vice versa, of course.

The latest from Gnome Stew

Posted: 01 Aug 2013 12:00 AM PDT

Today's guest article is by reader Tom Puketza, who I believe is our most prolific guest article writer -- his previous articles are Building a "Petri Dish" Sandbox and The Handmade, Super-Simple Wizard Tower Tile Set. Thanks, Tom! Recently I finished the Xbox game Fallout New Vegas. Without giving anything away, you're shown a long slide show detailing the fate of all the people you met in the game. This took me by surprise and gave the game a really cool immersive feel. Naturally, I thought it'd be a good thing to shamelessly steal for use in my tabletop campaign. Every campaign racks up a list of friends, enemies, and factions. What happens to all these people? If your group has spent actual (real-world) years adventuring it can be very rewarding to revisit the notable ones and see how things panned out. The basic idea is simple: Write up a good narrative conclusion to your campaign, but also include epilogues for as many NPCs as you think may be appropriate, then find a good way to present all this to your group during or after your final session. Below are three delivery ideas as well as pros and cons to each approach. Maybe you can think of others.

Round Table Read

Place your epilogues on a stack of 3x5 cards, hand each player an even number, then have them go around the table. Each player reads a card until you reach the end. You probably want to have some good ending music playing in the background.Pros: Getting the players involved gives them one last bit of personal investment. A good set of players could also really make things shine. Cons: We are not all born actors and orators, and you're asking everyone to deliver cold reads. If you're going for a dramatic delivery, this can derail into giggles, false starts, and general messiness. The wrong set of players could also completely ruin this experience. There is also a high potential for misunderstanding, so make sure your cards are as explicit and clear as possible.

GM as Omniscient Narrator

Instead of giving the players your 3x5 cards, you the GM read them yourself. If you're confident enough, you can really turn this into a solo performance. For example, you can do what Fallout does and present each epilogue from the point of view of a particular NPC. You can also spice this up using old props, maps, and whatever other tokens and art you used to reference all those old adventures. (That is, if you still have it lying around.) Pros: GM has total control. You can practice your delivery. Cons: GM has to effectively perform uninterrupted for several minutes. This means earning undivided attention, and we all know nothing in gaming survives contact with the players intact. Also, rather than prepping for a game, you may end up rehearsing. Gathering props and art and trinkets the players used, or ones they will recognize, may be challenging.

TOTAL MULTIMEDIA EXTRAVAGANZA

Projectors! Slide shows! Soundtracks! Art and props! ACTING! Pros: Awesome. Cons: You're basically mounting your own mini stage production. This means your campaign conclusion has just become an event. You will need lots and lots of rehearsal time. You will need to do tech rehearsals to make sure all your equipment works. You may get odd looks from your family. You might get tied up in things like "subtext" and "artistic intention." You may or may not be as good a narrator and actor as Ian McKellen.

General Tips

However you do it, you want to make the players feel like they made a difference in the world. You want to show the consequences of their choices and how the people they met made out in the end. But probably most importantly, you want to create a feeling of closure to the story everyone shared. A definitive, proper ending is a really powerful experience. Its what makes us remember our favorite movies, books, performers, politicians, and events. It provides emotional satisfaction few other things can. And like they say about pizza: when it's good, it's great, and when its bad, it's still pretty good. In all my years of gaming, I've only seen a campaign end (as opposed to stop) a few times. And yet, it was usually anticlimactic and rushed. In one case I spent two years developing a character I really enjoyed. I had had so much fun feeling like I was in my own TV adventure series. But by the time it came to end things everyone grew impatient. The GM hurried the last game so he could get to the next campaign. A slide show send off would have been, dare I say, more respectful. If you are running a long campaign and can pull off a good ending like this, your players will remember it for years. Here's to memorable exits.