Dice Goblin

I participated in the FIST GASHAPON JAM recently (and came in second!), and whenever I write for FIST, I like to center it around a gimmick, a core idea, a wild swing for the fences. For SLUSH FUND, this became the theme of betrayals, double-crosses (and a prisoner’s dilemma).

It’s not hard, as a Game Master, to deceive your players. If anything, the trick is trying to walk the line between ‘properly laying down clues’ and ‘still surprising players when the twist is revealed’.

A common maxim for mysteries is the Three Clue Rule, which is solid, I think. The framework A POUND OF MYSTERIES by Talison Crosby as featured in Mothership zine Hull Breach is a great next development of this idea – in fact, it served as inspiration for another FIST module of mine, CHAOS VECTOR.

So yes, three clues is a good idea, but that still doesn’t solve a core tension:

Betrayals are a really cool storytelling device

and

Given the information imbalance between Game Master and players, betrayals always have a risk of feeling like an ass-pull.

and

A betrayal that’s too subtle/not foreshadowed sucks for players

and

A betrayal that’s foreshadowed too much can be figured out too soon

Now, arguably, that last statement needn’t be an issue. Figuring it out early can feel rewarding for players, and that’s fun. However, it can feel shitty for the Game Master, seeing an intended cool moment fall apart. Now, another maxim to follow is Prepare motives, not story, of course, but still – it’s an interesting question to think about.

I won’t claim to offer the perfect solution here. I just figured I’d do a wild approach, and it relies on quite a few contrivances. Then again, it might inspire greater and better writers to do better things with it.

That brings me to:

SLUSH FUND – 3 agents, 3 motives

My solution to the idea that “a betrayal by NPCs could feel like an ass pull, due to the NPCs being played by the Game Master who knows everything,” is the following:

• At the beginning of the module, 3 different main opposing NPC agents are introduced. Each have their own background, methods, name.
• Separately from that, there are 3 different roles are assigned to these agents. These roles are written down and put aside by the Game Master, and are thus objective truth.

These roles are not necessarily “traitor” or “faithful” – in the module, I picked Professional, Zealot and Charmer.

Now, in and of itself, this could work quite nicely already. However, I figured we’d need a specific situation, a set piece, where all of this comes together. Thus: the prisoner’s dilemma.

(Now, to be fair, I think my idea of “I want to run a prisoner’s dilemma” came first, and the role-system came after.)

In the module, I also codified what would happen in various match-ups between these roles. The adventure forces the party to pick a path and join one of the agents, with two agents picking the other path. So, I included possible outcomes for each of these match-ups (spoiler: only 1 agent makes it out the other path), which all leads to a large terminal room which provides access to the titular SLUSH FUND.

This leads to a large, dramatic game-show like finale, and I’m pretty pleased with the final result.

Further Thoughts

That’s what I made, and what I wanted to share. I think this could be an interesting jumping-off point to more adventures or modules that work like this. The ingredients it needs:

• A lock-in towards a clear, specific goal, involving a zero sum game of some sorts.
• Multiple competing, relatively equal parties.
• A clear understanding on the sides of the players of the choices, mechanics, trust and risk involved with gaining access to/obtaining the goal.
• A list of interesting personalities/profiles/roles, linked separately/at random to the actual NPCs.

That distribution of information is an important one: I think this works best if the players also understand what’s going on, to some degree – that there’s something to figure out. I’m not sure the solution would be as blunt as the Game Master telling them “I’m assigning 3 roles at random to the 3 notable NPCs you meet, and it will be up to you to figure out what’s going on“, but somewhere in all this, I think there’s strength in the idea that a player could read the SLUSH FUND module and, besides having some pre-written surprises spoiled, the game would still play out quite neatly.

In fact, knowing exactly what roles are in play might heighten the tension far more. Perhaps the party has received intel that there’s a Professional, Zealot and Charmer on-site, not knowing who’s who.

Similarly, I think revealing the hidden roles at the end is a good move to make. This can be done in-universe (especially in a setting like FIST – oh look, the full intelligence report on the agents came in, just as the mission concluded), but in the module I take the easy route of “The Referee reveals what’s been going on”.

So, those are my thoughts on this for now. Would love to hear yours!

Look out, I’m right behind you,

• Lars