After the War, and Performing the End

After the War is, quote: “a tabletop science-fiction roleplaying game of memetic horror. Ten years after the galactic war, millions of survivors try to rebuild on the frontier world of Polvo. They seek to guard their new homes from internal strife and the psychic fallout from the war.” This does not do justice to the horrific history that your characters have to deal with.

Among After the War’s inspirations is Fiasco. Like Fiasco, the game proscribes a slightly more regimented method of finding out what happens next, apart from the more laissez-faire method of most RPGs.

To wit: the players must agree on which “scene” is going to happen next. This is established by three separate players who choose in turn the Platform, Tilt, and Question of the scene. The Platform being the setting, atmosphere, surroundings, etc; the Tilt being the inciting incident that sets the scene off; and the Question being the focus or intent of the scene — why you’re having the scene at all.

Once the scene is set up, the players all decide which of their characters is involved in the scene and which players will be audience members. Actors in the scene then detail what they want to have happen, and how they want it to happen. If two players disagree, they can negotiate a compromise or initiate a conflict. Conflicts are resolved with rolling dice.

Once the conflicts are resolved and compromises negotiated, then the scene begins.

This leads to a very interesting situation, one that happens rarely in RPGs, namely: “playing the end.”

In acting, “playing the end” is when an actor knows their character is supposed to fall in love with The Jerk at the end of the play, and so softens their tone in early scenes, keeping themselves from seeming too angry, because they’re supposed to fall in love, right? But not yet. They’re supposed to be angry; they’re supposed to “play the current scene, not the end of the play.”

In RPGs, “playing the end” is a little different; it’s knowing how a scene is going to end before you act it out.

In most games, roleplay is done to progress the characters from one scene to the next. The GM asks “what does your character do?” and a player acts out their ideas until they get to an obstacle: “The judge frowns at you,” the GM says, “and doesn’t look like they’re willing to give a not-guilty verdict, even though you’re a knight of the realm.”

“I’d like to persuade them through a patriotic speech,” the player says, “can I roll?”

The GM nods, and whether the die rolls high or low dictates whether this frowny-judge frowns deeper or changes their frown to a smile. It is a story created as it is performed, points of tension rising and falling as the players imagine what their personae “would do in this situation.”

Playing the end is more like the dynamic in a writer’s room: The knight’s player considers; “I think there’s a lot of mileage to be had from seeing my character in jail. After all, they’re still dealing with their uncertain loyalty to the King.”

“Ooh, yeah,” says another. “And if my thief stops by and rubs it in their face, they could finally have a blow-out argument; hash out their class bigotries and personal insecurities. It might bring them closer together!”

“Sounds good,” the GM nods. “So, if the judge is going to send you to jail, we can discuss how you defend yourself, because I don’t think your knight would let this false accusation slide without a fight. How does your defense go wrong?”

“They’d try to give a speech,” is the delighted answer, “but after seeing the suffering the King’s Laws are causing, their heart isn’t in it. I think they start to say something patriotic, but they feel more and more ashamed until…”

Once the particulars are all decided, the players can then start the scene.

Wait. Hold on. We know if a player succeeds, and we know how a player succeeds, and we know the consequences of a player succeeding…do we need to bother acting it out? What does improvisational roleplay add if the pertinent aspects of the scene are already established?

Well…maybe nothing. Maybe you don’t act the scene out. That’s a perfectly viable way to roleplay, as seen by RPGs that aren’t about people at all, such as The Quiet Year or The Council of Cats.

But in After the War or Fiasco, the acting out of a scene is not the primary method of figuring out exactly “what happens next,” which makes it a purpose in its own right. The point of acting out these pre-defined scenes is to experience it happening.

This is an important part of RPGs; the experiencing. Remember when I talked about why people might play RPGs? For some people, experiencing something different is the reason for roleplaying at all. To feel the barbarian’s rage, the super-spy’s despair, the detective’s terror…it’s like going on a roller coaster. You don’t ride to get to the end, but to feel the drops.

Now, if you don’t feel comfortable acting out your character’s emotional love-sick pleas to their paramour, you don’t have to roleplay it; but if you need some concrete data-driven excuse for why acting out a scene could still be useful, then consider this. Characters can surprise you.

Especially when improvising, you may find your persona saying something you hadn’t considered before. In the above example, maybe the thief actually thinks the knight is better than them, and aspires to some kind of knighthood themselves. Maybe the Knight still holds a grudge from three sessions ago, and no one realized it until now. Improvisation can send characters and stories in new and fascinating directions as surely as dice can.

After all, you may know how this scene will play out, but do you know what’s going to happen in the next scene? What you improvise will certainly influence the rest of the game.

Playing the end is a specific style of play that at first could seem a little odd to the unfamiliar. If every narrative crossroad is handled by a single result-roll, you are given much more flexibility in the details. It’s even possible that the narrative becomes so self-evident that you might only roll a few times the whole session. Let the narrative flow naturally and you may find that there are only a few instances where the players have any uncertainty in which direction the story should go.

The keyword here is consistency. If your group result-rolls through one fight, they should probably result-roll with every fight, or at least provide reasoning for why this fight requires a bit more than just a single die roll when that one didn’t. Inconsistent or unreliable GM rulings can be unpleasant gaming experience.

And remember, you still have to be safe. After the War is an adult RPG, with themes of betrayal, inevitability, selfishness, bigotry, and tense conversations. Everyone won’t necessarily be up for that all the time.

And of course, there are some people who don’t like play that involves a lot of result-rolls and playing the end. If your instinct is to play action-by-action, spelling out your character’s attempts and re-strategizing on the fly, then result rolling might feel like giving up a lot of control over your character.

If you explain your offer to the king and roll once, the GM might decide that your actions are insulting or the monarchs disagreeable. “No,” you might then say, “if my character insulted the king, they’d apologize. I even have ideas of how they’d fix it; I’d bring up my friendship with their allies in the next kingdom over. I’d offer a portion of our spoils. I’d salvage the situation. You just made me fail!”

But this is usually how we handle conversation in RPGs. Next time, I’d like to talk about an alternative.