Antagonism for fun and profit

Something I’ve mentioned previously but not discussed in depth is the link between Antagonism (providing opposition for other players in Conflicts) and Council Votes.

Council Votes are a player currency that act at a meta level of the game. They have no direct role in the shared fiction – the story that is constructed by the player’s play.

In many roleplaying games a single player acts as a moderator or arbiter. This role, commonly know as the Game Master (GM), is responsible for orchestrating challenges or presenting non-player characters for the rest of the players and their characters to react to or interact with.

In Quadrivium, there is no GM. Instead, each of the players has control of a single character (their mage) and the opportunity to oppose the actions of other player’s characters. The reasons to provide opposition include:

(a) you disagree with their intention for how the shared fiction will develop

(b) you think that opposition will enhance the shared fiction (stories without opposition or challenge generally lack interest)

(c) opposition is required by the game rules because a player wants to make a quantitative change to a character or Covenant resource

(d) you want to earn some Council Votes

When you oppose the action of another player’s character, you must choose how this opposition will occur. Sometimes, it will be obvious. A player who states that their character is attacking a dragon should likely be opposed by an Antagonist electing to take the role of the dragon. But a player stating his character learns a secret, without specifying how, is leaving a lot of potential for an Antagonist to define the nature of the conflict. The conflict could be represented specifically by the opposition of a single character (e.g. a battle of wits with a sage who holds the secret). Or it could be represented abstractly by assigning character stats to a journey that must be undertaken or a mountain the must be climbed. Personalizing an abstraction or inanimate object in this way is fully permissible so long as other players agree it makes sense to do so.

Additionally, an Antagonist can always oppose another player’s character with their own mage if they are willing to do so.

Still, the prevalent pattern for roleplaying is that players are cooperating against the GM. How does this change in a game of Quadrivium.

Well, the ideal is that players are still cooperating with each other (e.g. we’re all having fun). Hopefully everyone at the table is interested in collaborating to create a good story (e.g. we’re making a cool story). But in addition to that, the rules should engage each player’s self-interest on a personal level (e.g. I’m doing well) as well as offering the fun of competition.

The balance is potentially delicate and should be self-correcting to a degree. Players who act as antagonists receive Council Votes, but encourage other players to use Covenant Resources to resist them. Council Votes allow players to not only compete for, but restore or improve Covenant Resources (in addition to permitting some actions in Conflicts). Too much opposition makes Harm to the Covenant likely. Repairing Harm to the Covenant absorbs a large portion of the Council Votes generated by opposition, making that opposition less advantageous. Opposition should then lessen to the point where these forces balance to the group’s satisfaction.

Hopefully I can produce a flowchart to better visualize the currency flow of Council Votes and Covenant Resources in the game. Next post I’ll discuss actual numbers with Council Votes.

Advertisement