System that encourages 'gaming it' for storytelling

[OgreBattle]

Was rereading the Tenra Bansho Zero RPG, which has a pretty in depth 'call on your fates/destinies' mechanic for mechanical dice bonuses. They have a blurb about how it's not 'wrong playing' to just focus on mechanical bonuses, because you're still creating a story in the process.

So the mechanics in question are...

1) Your character has fates with have ratings, when they do something related to that fate they can spend kiai points to add a bonus to the roll. Like "become the strongest swordsman" or "uncover the truth of ___"

2) You have Kiai points that are spent for mechanical bonuses like hitting harder, avoiding an enemy attack

3) Spent Kiai points turn into Karma points, when karma reaches 108 (there will be a chance for players to lower karma even if they go past that point in a scene) the PC becomes an NPC totally consumed by their fate obsessions (TBZ calls these people asura).

4) Karma can be lowered by cancelling fates, it represents the character no longer obsessed with becoming the strongest swordsman, with vengeance for their clan, etc.

5) Back to fates, the more karma points you have the higher level your fates can be, which means even more powerful kiai

So your fate generates kiai which is best spent towards accomplishing the goals of said fate, the kiai generates karma, higher karma means stronger fates, stronger fates means more effective spending of kiai...

But there's also ways to lower karma

a) Spend kiai during downtime activities, but then you have less for active scenes
b) Give up fates, the stronger the fate the more karma is reduced

So you can have a fate of "vengeance for my clan", but your karma is near xceeding 108, so you 'let go of that obsession' to lower it.


Now back to the question premise, gaming this system. Tenra Bansho Zero gives a replay (ana ctual gameplay session) where somebody did game this system by....

- The PC didn't spend much kiai, saved it up for the showdown with the big bad
- The PC then spent a ton of kiai, like this is a system where +5 is big and he was getting +10 bonuses and multiple actions, basically making it so he couldn't lose this battle
- This rocketed his karam way past 108
- The PC though had pre-calculated, he knew he could give up nearly all of his fates "become the strongest ___" "vengeance for ___" "love for ____" to lower his karma to below 108

the player just wanted to kill the badguy ('rollplay') so he gamed this roleplay system for mega ultiamte power in one round. But as his character sheet changed drastically it was decided that the villain's attack had hit the PC's very soul so he lost his memory/desires. He then appears in the next gameplay session forming new fates, possibly aligning with an evil sorcerer NPC (this game supports PC conflict and puts a lot of scene creating in the PC's hands)

Tenra Bansho Zero's take was refreshing, as I'm used to most "our play session" reports online being a DM bragging about how he humiliated some 'rollplaying asshole' who knew the mechanics more than he did and played to it.

I've paraphrased the TBZ karma/kiai system, there's also ways to get bonus poinst (aiki) without accruing karma, and a kabuki style audience participation system. Kinda like stunting in exalted but it's everyone who 'hands them out'

[Blade]

I'm fine with systems that encourage decisions that have an impact on the character's development and roleplay, but I'm wary of systems that need to be "gamed".
Most of the time, "gaming the system" means having to go full rule-lawyer and more casual players will be left out because they didn't spend hours searching for loopholes in the rules.

[Guts]

Tenra Bansho Zero is great. We played a couple sessions of it and had a blast. I agree with your impressions and I think this is a quality of games that are good at genre-emulation.

I've seen a similar story about Masks a New Generation: a player who wasn't familiar with the teen supers genre was preoccupied in role-playing in a way to fit the genre. To which the GM said "Don't sweat it. Just engage the mechanics and do what feels strategically sound or advantageous". And bingo, when the player saw it, he was producing stories totally in-genre.

[jt]

FATE does a very similar thing. Aspects are short descriptions of interesting things about your character. When one is relevant to an action, you can spend a fate point for a large bonus. But you get fate points in the first place by roleplaying aspects when they're inconvenient to you. In particular when the GM remembers one of your aspects could lead you astray they can compel you to follow it, in exchange for a fate point.

So part of optimizing FATE is making memorable flaws that the GM can keep tempting you with so you can keep getting fate points.

Unfortunately the best way to optimize the system is a bunch of memorable flaws and then the closest to "best at everything" you can get away with so you can spend your points.

[Pedantic]

FATE does a very similar thing. Aspects are short descriptions of interesting things about your character. When one is relevant to an action, you can spend a fate point for a large bonus. But you get fate points in the first place by roleplaying aspects when they're inconvenient to you. In particular when the GM remembers one of your aspects could lead you astray they can compel you to follow it, in exchange for a fate point.

So part of optimizing FATE is making memorable flaws that the GM can keep tempting you with so you can keep getting fate points.

Unfortunately the best way to optimize the system is a bunch of memorable flaws and then the closest to "best at everything" you can get away with so you can spend your points.

I really hate that FATE is determined to shove players into authorial stance at all times. The idea is interesting if used sparingly, but the idea that you're supposed to tag aspects like "dark and cramped" mid-combat to mess with your opponents really pushes the whole thing overboard. The narrative shouldn't be something that can only be assembled out of the game components in retrospect.

Plus, that optimization case would be really mitigated if aspects weren't open-ended phrases. The mechanic would work so much better if it worked off of more limited pick-lists, and wasn't the system's answer to literally everything.

[OgreBattle]

with fate rpg there doesn’t seem to be a drawback with picking some broad or an array of specific fates and drawing upon them over and over

I think TBZ, because most of the players come from console rpg’s, is fine with ‘gaming’ because there’s always a fun gamed combo in dragon quest, SMT, FF and the people at a Japanese 90’s rpg table are used to that